Dynamic Host Configuration Working Group
Chairpersons:  Ralph Droms/Bucknell University and Phill Gross/NRI





CURRENT MEETING REPORT
Reported by Ralph Droms



AGENDA


   o Review Objectives from April meeting

   o Agree on statement of required configuration information

   o Discuss existing configuration protocols


ATTENDEES


       1. Borman, Dave/dab@cray.com

       2. Brunner, Eric/brunner@monet.berkeley.edu

       3. Cook, John/cook@chipcom.com

       4. Deering, Steve/deering@pescadero.stanford.edu

       5. Denny, Barbara/denny@sri.com

       6. Droms, Ralph/rdroms@nri.reston.va.us

       7. Edwards, David/dle@cisco.com

       8. Fair, Erik/fair@apple.com

       9. Fox, Richard/rfox@suntan.tandem.com

      10. Gilligan, Bob/gilligan@sun.com

      11. Gross, Phill/pgross@nri.reston.va.us

      12. Jordt, Dan/danj@cac.washington.edu

      13. Lear, Eliot/lear@net.bio.net

      14. Lottor, Mark/mkl@nic.ddn.mil

      15. LoVerso, John/loverso@xylogics.com

      16. Maas, Andy/maas@jessica.stanford.edu

      17. Mamakos, Louis/louie@trantor.umd.edu

      18. Mockapetris, Paul/pvm@isi.edu



                                        2
      19. Morgan, Bob/morgan@jessica.stanford.edu

      20. Mundy, Russ/mundy@tis.com
      21. Natalie, Ron/ron@rutgers.edu


      22. Partridge, Craig/craig@nnsc.nsf.net

      23. Perkins, Drew/ddp@andrew.cmu.edu

      24. Petry, Mike/petry@trantor.umd.edu

      25. Rochlis, Jon/jon@mit.edu

      26. Romkey, John/romkey@asylum.sf.ca.us

      27. Satz, Greg/satz@cisco.com

      28. Schiller, Jeff/jis@bitsy.mit.com

      29. Skinner, Greg/gds@spam.istc.sri.com

      30. Westfield, Bill/billw@cisco.com


MINUTES

The Stanford meeting began with a review of the objectives discussed at the
April meeting.  The next topic was a discussion of information required by a
host to participate in Internet communications:


   o IP address

   o Subnet properties

       -- Subnet mask

       -- MTU

       -- Broadcast address

   o Default gateway

   o DNS server

   o Domain name of host

   o High-level services

       -- Boot services

       -- Other gateways

       -- Local network topology


Having agreed on the list of configuration information, the group developed
a list of mechanisms required to distribute and maintain host
configurations:



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   o IP address discovery

   o IP address allocation
   o Subnet properties discovery


   o Gateway discovery

   o Gateway reconfiguration

   o DNS server discovery

   o Domain name allocation

   o DNS update/name, IP address registration

   o High-level resource discovery


These mechanisms can be loosely grouped into two categories:  discovery
mechanisms, which transmit configuration information to a host, and
allocation mechanisms, which determine host-specific information.  For
example, the mechanism used to transmit an IP address to a host can be
entirely independent of the mechanism used to select that IP address.

Several members of the group described details of existing configuration
mechanisms (both at the meeting and immediately afterward, through the
host-config@rutgers.edu mailing list).  There are several existing protocols
of interest to this group:


   o ICMP

   o BOOTP

   o Athena NIP (Schiller and Rosenstein, MIT)

   o Dynamic IP Address Assignment (Morgan, Stanford)

   o DRARP (Brownell, Sun)


At the next meeting, we will discuss an Internet Draft that summarizes the
conclusions reached at the Stanford meeting.