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Concluded WG Service Location Protocol (svrloc)

Note: The data for concluded WGs is occasionally incorrect.

WG Name Service Location Protocol
Acronym svrloc
Area Internet Area (int)
State Concluded
Charter charter-ietf-svrloc-01 Approved
Document dependencies
Personnel Chair Erik Guttman
Mailing list Address srvloc@srvloc.org
To subscribe srvloc-request@srvloc.org
Archive http://www.srvloc.org/hypermail/index.htm

Final Charter for Working Group

The Service Location Protocol is a decentralized, lightweight, scalable
and extensible protocol for service discovery within a site. It allows
but does not require centralized administration. Even when security,
administrative policies or convenience require centralization (say in
large enterprise deployments) the protocol requires very little
administration. The protocol limits its use of multicast and broadcast
as much as possible to conserve network bandwidth. Moreover, the
protocol is extensible to arbitrary service advertisement and discovery
and supports multiple languages and character set encodings.

The working group will document procedures for discovering services,
and standardize "service:" schemes, which are definitions for resource
and service URLs.

The focus of the working group will be on completing various documents
which describe how to do service discovery and how to standardize
service definitions which will be advertised and discovered.

  • Interactions between Service Location Protocol and other enterprise
    naming and directory service protocols will be explored, defined,
    and standardized.

  • Schemes for popular services will be discussed, and standardization
    efforts with other working groups explored as needed.

  • Operational experiences and security procedures will be discussed
    and documented as best current practice.

  • Service Type attribute definitions will be standardized by
    registering a 'Service Template' with IANA. This document will
    also describe how Service Types and Directory Schemas can be made
    interoperable. The Service Location Protocol can then be used to
    populate a directory service dynamically.

  • An Application Programmers Interface has been developed to allow
    a uniform mechanism for applications to make use of Service Location
    Protocol functions, which will be supplied as an informational
    document.

  • The Service Location Protocol itself will be revised and improved
    on, continuing it along the standards track.

Done milestones

Date Milestone Associated documents
Done Review the status of the SVRLOC WG. Revise the charter or shut down.
Done Submit a revised I-D of the Service Location Protocol reflecting implementation experience and working group consensus on open issues.
Done Submit a service: URL and service template definition as an Internet-Draft.
Done Submit the modifications to SLP for implementing it on IPv6 to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
Done Submit an API for the Service Location Protocol to IESG for consideration as an Informational RFC.
Done Define a Service Discovery procedure for use in site as well as internet applications. Also define a mechanism for advertising services using DNS TXT records.
Done Define an authentication mechanism for Service Location.
Done Issue a standards track protocol specification for the Service Location Protocol
Done Continue discussion trying to refine the problem statement and possible resolutions.
Done Open discussion and determine if a working group should be formed.