Protocol Action: Service Location Protocol, Version 2 to Proposed Standard
The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org> Mon, 03 May 1999 15:15 UTC
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From: The IESG <iesg-secretary@ietf.org>
Subject: Protocol Action: Service Location Protocol, Version 2 to Proposed Standard
Date: Mon, 03 May 1999 11:13:58 -0400
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This announcement is being resent with the full set of approved documents (the API document was mistakenly left off the previous announcement). The IESG has approved publication of the following Internet-Drafts as Proposed Standards: o Service Location Protocol, Version 2 <draft-ietf-svrloc-protocol-v2-15.txt> o Service Templates and service: Schemes <draft-ietf-svrloc-service-scheme-14.txt> The IESG also approved publication of An API for Service Location <draft-ietf-svrloc-api-09.txt> as an Informational RFC. These documents are the product of the Service Location Protocol Working Group. The IESG contact persons are Erik Nordmark and Thomas Narten Technical Summary The document "Service Location Protocol, Version 2" provides a framework for providing hosts with access to information about the existence, location, and configuration of networked services. Traditionally, users have had to find services by knowing the name of a network host (a human readable text string) which is an alias for a network address. SLP eliminates the need for a user to know the name of a network host supporting a service. Rather, the user supplies the desired type of service and a set of attributes which describe the service. Based on that description, the Service Location Protocol resolves the network address of the service for the user. SLPv2 is suitable for use within a site (which can range from a few to several thousand nodes), but does not scale to the size of the entire Internet. The document "Service Templates and service: Schemes" describes a formal procedure for defining and standardizing new service types and attributes for use with the "service:" scheme. The "service:" schema are used to describe services in SLPv2. The formal descriptions of service types and attributes are templates that are human and machine understandable. "An API for Service Location" describes an API (using C or Java) for accessing and using the facilities of SLPv2. Working Group Summary This document is a revised version of SLPv1 (RFC 2165) and builds on the experience of SLPv1. There was consensus in the WG for these documents. One Last Call comment attempted to simplify certain aspects of the protocol with a goal of making it more easily possible in the future to use an alternate directory access protocol. Much work was done to attempt to address the concerns raised. In the end, however, the WG felt that the necessary changes were too large and removed important functionality, and the proposed changes were not adopted. Protocol Quality These documents have been reviewed for the IESG by Thomas Narten. There is at least one implementation of SLPv2 and the APIs, based on recent (but not the final) drafts.