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Background

This is a constant value two four byte magic number at the start of every message.

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• The synchronisation of decoding in the middle of a flow.
• Recovering from missing data.
• Aiding in the automated detection of protocols from an uncategorised mixture of network traffic.

The two four byte field also ensures that the message header components are optimally aligned for efficient direct access.

Usage

A constant value of 17997 of 1179469389 must always be assigned to this field, this corresponds to an on-the-wire byte representation of "MFMFMF":

• The MF Reference API populates this value on the Client's behalf in all messages sent to the FH.
• If a Client implementation should not use the Reference API, then it must implement it's own mechanism to ensure that this value is always populated.
• The FH will ensure that this is populated in every message sent to the Client.
• The FH will validate every message received from the Client.

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