DHCPv6 host-identifier, the Never Ending Thread: A Summary

Ralph Droms rdroms at cisco.com
Sun Mar 8 11:34:07 UTC 2009


Marcus - the decision is not so much to leave other options to "vendor  
options" as to define new options "on demand".  The dhc WG made a  
decision that there are a lot of DHCPv4 options that are essentially  
unused, so we reviewed the list, came up with a minimal set of  
required options which were included in RFC 3315.  We've defined a few  
other options since RFC 3315.

If you have other options that are note yet defiend and would be of  
global interest, please bring them to the attention of the dhc WG.

- Ralph

On Mar 7, 2009, at 6:58 PM 3/7/09, Marcus Goller wrote:

> John Jason Brzozowski wrote:
>> Frank, et al,
>>
>> I planned on participating in the 160+ email thread but got tied up.
>>
>> For what it is worth as someone leading a large IPv6 effort where,  
>> as you stated below, MAC addresses are leveraged extensively I can  
>> tell you how I handled this issue.
>>
>> When we specified the use of DHCPv6 in DOCSIS 3.0 we of course  
>> leveraged vendor information options.  In these options as you will  
>> see if you read the DOCSIS specifications we made provisions to  
>> carry the MAC address of the device that adheres to this  
>> specification.  This is one part of the equation.  I also had to  
>> make sure that the necessary back office systems, DHCP for example,  
>> account for the presence of these options to support the deployment.
>>
>> If you wish I would be willing to discuss further offline.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> John
> John,
>
> Interesting point actually, now that you bring it up. When I first  
> looked at the DHCPv6 RFC, I thought "Hey! Where did all my options  
> go?". If I understand it right, DHCPv6 tries to cover to core  
> functionalities only, the rest is left to the vendor information  
> options. The CableLabs specifications are a good example, because  
> they might also be interesting for people who use a TFTP server as  
> part of the boot process.
> Getting client vendors to support an arbitrary vendor information  
> option, might be as hard or easy as getting them to support an  
> optional extension to the protocol. On the server side it is  
> probably easier to agree on a few standard vendor options which get  
> implemented.
> The only hard part is to know which vendor information options are  
> already out there and are useful, and which need to be created. But  
> it is probably the cleanest and intended way of extending the  
> protocol.
>
> Regards,
> Marcus
> _______________________________________________
> dhcp-users mailing list
> dhcp-users at lists.isc.org
> https://lists.isc.org/mailman/listinfo/dhcp-users




More information about the dhcp-users mailing list