Re: NT 3.51 dhcp client and server ip address

[Shawn Mamros <[e-mail]>]

Ted Lemon <[e-mail]> writes:
>I think it's too late at this point to undo the overloading.   There
>are far too many dhcp clients out there which believe that the server
>identifier is the address to which they should unicast DHCPREQUEST
>messages.
[...]
>I guess one question is, how do we want to fix this?   My first take
>on a clarification which has minimal implementation implications is:
>
>        If the DHCP Server and the DHCP Client are connected to the
>        same subnet, the Server Identifier SHOULD be the IP address
>        the server is using for communication on that subnet.   If the
>        server is using multiple IP addresses on that subnet, any such
>        address may be used.   The Server Identifier MUST be an IP
>        address to which the client may unicast a TCP packet using
>        routing information it has obtained using the DHCP routers
>        option.   DHCP Clients MUST use the IP address provided in
>        the Server Identifier option for any unicast requests to the
>        DHCP Server.
>
>This avoids *requiring* that the Server Identifier be the most
>directly reachable IP address belonging to the server, while
>suggesting that it should be, which means that existing
>implementations that do not do this are not non-conforming except when
>run incompletely-connected networks.

This sounds like a perfectly acceptable solution to me.  Only one minor
question: do we want to say "UDP" instead of "TCP" in that clause?  Other
than that, I say let's go for it...

(Apologies to all if my earlier messages came out a bit harsh - it's been
one of those days...)

-Shawn Mamros
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