RE: [dhcwg] IDs on remote boot support for DHCP

Bernie

Thanks for your comments. My reply inline.. 

Vijay

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dhcwg-admin@ietf.org [mailto:dhcwg-admin@ietf.org] On 
> Behalf Of Bernie Volz
> Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 9:36 AM
> To: 'Vijayabhaskar A K'
> Cc: dhcwg@ietf.org
> Subject: RE: [dhcwg] IDs on remote boot support for DHCP
> 
> 
> Vijay:
> 
> I don't understand the suboption (1) encoding for the 
> multiple servers (ts
> field) and the bootfiles (fn fields). Perhaps something 
> happened with this document or it is incomplete? 

No. There is no problem with the draft. Option 66 and 67 are are used as
suboption to the suboption (1). Thus, 2 levels of suboptions are used
here.. The parsing of these suboptions should be done similar to the
other suboptions..

>Please look 
> it over. Perhaps it is my problem, but if it isn't clear, I'm 
> sure others will have similar issues. Why don't you just use 
> two suboptions, one for the list of TFTP servers to use and 
> another for the bootfile names? 

I want to associate files with the tftp servers.. If I define them as
you have suggested, the servers and files will be disjoint..

> Also, can the TFTP server 
> names be IP addresses?

Yes. It's a nice idea. A new suboption (op code: 1) can be defined for
Remote Boot Information suboption to carry a tftp server address. Either
this option or option 66 can appear in the ts field...

> Perhaps you should consider using the 
> DNS wire format instead of ASCII?

Both can co-exist with the model defined above..
> 
> I have a similar issue with the DHCPv6 draft. Seems to me if 
> makes more sense to have two options - one to list the TFTP 
> servers and another to list the bootfiles? (I guess there 
> could be an argument made that different bootfiles might be 
> used with different servers???) 

Same reason as that of DHCPv4

> It is also odd that you would 
> want to allow multiple TFTP server addresses in the DHCPv4 
> case, but only allow one in the DHCPv6 case. Or have I missed 
> something? 

Section 5 says:

This option can only appear in the OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT. If multiple
Remote Boot Parameters Options are present in OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT,
then they should be listed in the increasing order of preferences.

Doesn't this convey that mutiple tftp servers can be sent?
OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT can encapsulate mutiple OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT_PARAMS,
which inturn contain a tftp server address and one or more boot files..
Thus OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT can carry multiple boot server addresses and
associated boot files...

> One way around this problem might be to allow 
> multiple OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT and for each of these, one can 
> have a list of server (OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT_SERVERS) and one or 
> more boot files (OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT_FILES). For each 
> instances of the OPTION_REMOTE_BOOT, the servers would all 
> use the same boot files. However, if you want servers to use 
> different boot files, you simply specify multiple OPTION_REMOTE_BOOTs.

The same thing can be achieved using my design with the additional
advantages of conveying preference of one tftp server over the other.

> 
> - Bernie

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