It appears that the answer to my first question is, this is a new use case/new feature for a previously unmentioned/ unsupported set of functionality. OK, now my second question, why would syncReply ever be *false* for a synchronous transport (for all scenarios pertinent to v1.0). For all asynchronous transports, syncReply is ignored, so its value is irrelevant (see section 7.4.7). - David.