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

[John Jason Brzozowski]

Marcus,

I think vendor options need to be specified per vendor or deployment  
type.  Not sure if you are suggesting if someone in en enterprise  
environment should leverage the Cablelabs DOCSIS TFTP options or not,  
I would actually recommend otherwise.  If specific options are  
required and are not currently defined in the appropriate space then  
either a core option or vendor specific option should be specified.

The DOCSIS options are good examples for people to consider and  
leverage as examples of how they want to handle DHCPv6 requirements  
for their own deployments, whether this means specifying vendor  
specific options or core DHCPv6 options with IETF dhc WG.

John
===============================================
John Jason Brzozowski
jjmb at jjmb.com
(p) 484-994-6787
(f) 610-616-4535
===============================================

On Mar 7, 2009, at 6:58 PM, 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
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