Re: Bit swapping across a DHCP Relay

[Richard Letts <[e-mail]>]

Eric Peterson wrote....
> 
>    3. What RFC defines this behavior? (I examined rfc1542, and although it
> 	discusses the issue of bit-ordering in the 'chaddr' field, it
> 	hardly mentions the actual MAC address.)
> 
If I were implementing a DHCP client/forwarder I'd use canonical addresses
thoughought. The Client would put its canonical address inside the packet,
which would not be touched by the relay. when the response comes back from the
DHCP server the relay converts the canonical address inside the packet into
the form required for the physical interface.

The alternative is for the client to put the mac address in in the form
requireed for the medium (canonical for ethernet, non-canonical for broken
ring and FDDI, and the relay agents NOT to touch it, but to use it as-is.

ie it doesn't matter what the client does, as long as it is consistant.
the Relayshould never touch the contents of the packet, EXcept to put its IP
address in the field inside the packet if it doesn't already have one.

As there is a a HWTYPE field the Server should know what sort of address it
is dealing with.

Richard Letts
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