Re: [dhcwg] DHCPv6 message type

[Bud Millwood <budm at weird-solutions.com>]

On Friday 25 April 2008, Shane Kerr wrote:
> Bernie,
>
> I guess it depends on the use case for such a message type.
>
> Bud, maybe you can give us some examples of the kind of thing you want
> to do?
>
> My thinking is, there are probably uses for a vendor message type, but
> we should also look to see if there is missing functionality that
> would be independently invented by different vendors.

We have a command-line client that can log into our server and make changes to 
the running system. Today this client sends a non-standard message to the 
DHCP server port to query the server for information about how to connect to 
the server as well as what basic capabilities (aka other services) can be 
accessed.

Although the query is available from the DHCP frontend, the actual services 
are typically not.

Another possibility could be to query load status. In our case we have quite a 
bit of load information that would not make much sense to other servers.

Granted, all of this can be done outside the DHCP protocol, but the one 
convenience is that with a vendor-specific message code we always know where 
to start - the dhcp server port.

As for the draft, it looks interesting, but I have reservations about 
reserving option codes for this message. My gut feeling is that once you get 
inside a vendor-specific message, it's your business/problem how you encode 
data, and the standard DHCP protocol should probably be left out of it.

- Bud

> Shane
>
> On Apr 24, 2008, at 23:38 +0200, Bernie Volz (volz) wrote:
> > Yes, I did write such a draft (just over a year ago), see
> > http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-volz-dhc-dhcpv6-vendor-message-00.
> >
> > I did not receive a warm reception for this idea, hence I stopped work
> > on it. If there is interest, it can always be updated and resubmitted.
> >
> > - Bernie
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: dhcwg-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:dhcwg-bounces at ietf.org] On Behalf
> > Of David W. Hankins
> > Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 6:20 PM
> > To: dhcwg at ietf.org
> > Subject: Re: [dhcwg] DHCPv6 message type
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 10:53:26PM +0200, Bud Millwood wrote:
> >> Has anyone else considered this idea?
> >
> > I think Bernie wrote a draft essentially defining a number of 'vendor
> > identified message codes' for much the same reason.  They looked a lot
> > like the vendor-identified options; using an enterprise-id to
> > disambiguate.
> >
> > He presented (I thought it was in the most recent Vancouver?) the
> > draft, but it doesn't seem to have progressed.
> >
> > I think it's possible that based upon the discussion, Bernie may have
> > determined further pursuit would not be a fruitful expendiature of
> > time.
> >
> > --
> > Ash bugud-gul durbatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
> > Why settle for the lesser evil?	 https://secure.isc.org/store/t-shirt/
> > --
> > David W. Hankins	"If you don't do it right the first time,
> > Software Engineer		     you'll just have to do it again."
> > Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.		-- Jack T. Hankins
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>
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-- 
Bud Millwood
Weird Solutions, Inc.
http://www.weird-solutions.com
tel: +46 8 758 3700
fax: +46 8 758 3687
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