Subject: RE: Discussion: sharing options/extensions between DHCPv4 and DHC Pv6

From: Bernie Volz <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 14:57:33 -0400

As I replied separately, I don't agree with reusing these.

One reason is that suppose you had a single repository (LDAP?) where all of
the options data was stored. If you let a single option have two possible
values, it just makes configuration of a the data (in this storage
repository or in a server that implements both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6) much more
difficult.

One option (one value) can store things like domain names and URLs. But, the
same is not true when the data "inside" the option can have two different
values.

-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Droms [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 2:48 PM
To: DHCPv6 discussion list
Subject: Re: Discussion: sharing options/extensions between DHCPv4 and
DHCPv6

At 11:31 AM 10/10/00 -0700, Ted Lemon wrote:

> > Summary: Bernie described certain DHCPv4 options as carrying
> > version-independent parameters such as domain names and URLs.  Any
> > option carrying an IP address would *not* fit into this category.
> > Such options would use the same option number and data format for both
> > DHCpv4 and DHCPv6 (although the option format would be different to
> > allow for 16-bit option codes and lengths in DHCPv6).
>
>I thought we were going to keep the options that have the same meaning
>but whose contents are IPv6 addresses instead of IPv4 addresses the
>same as well.   Is there any reason not to?

I thought we had discussed that as well, but I couldn't find any reference 
to the idea in the archive - of course, I may have missed it.

In any event, retaining those options that carry IP addresses as sell makes 
sense to me.  I can imagine adding some text somewhere to the effect that 
the following options carry IPv4 addresses  whn carried in a DHCPv4 message 
and IPv6 addresses when carried in an IPv6 message (and be sure to fix the 
len field to be 4*n or 16*n)...

- Ralph