Re: stateless DHCP question

>>>>> On Thu, 1 Sep 2005 15:45:08 -0400, 
>>>>> "Kevin Purser" <kpurser <at> opnet.com> said:

> Section 5.1 of RFC 3736 states that the messages required for stateless DHCP
> are the Information-request and Reply messages.  However, does the client
> first need to solicit a particular server with the Solicit message, or can
> it simply send the Information-request to the
> ALL_DHCP_Relay_Agents_and_Servers multicast address and accept the config
> returned by any server?  Or is this up to the implementer?

The client can simply send the Information-request (rather, it
probably *should* do so instead of sending Solicit first, because if
the server only supports the RFC3736 subset of RFC3315 (i.e.,
stateless DHCPv6), it may ignore the Solicit message, causing
unnecessary delay or even failure of expected exchanges).

One may think this is not very clear from the specification, but, I
personally think Section 18.1.5 of RFC3315 (in the context of the
entire RFC) is clear enough on this.

					JINMEI, Tatuya
					Communication Platform Lab.
					Corporate R&D Center, Toshiba Corp.
					jinmei <at> isl.rdc.toshiba.co.jp