Subject: MDHCP review

From: Steve Hanna <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1998 17:55:39 -0500 (EST)

In the malloc working group, we have been working on a protocol that hosts may 
use to allocate multicast addresses (or perform other related operations). This 
protocol, MDHCP, is described in draft-ietf-malloc-mdhcp-01.txt.

Originally, this protocol was a minor variation on DHCP and the idea was that a 
DHCP client or server implementation could also serve as an MDHCP implementation 
with minor changes. Over time, the protocol has become more and more different 
from DHCP (fields removed from header, different option space). However, we have 
attempted to keep the protocol similar to DHCP in order to allow code sharing.

The question has arisen within the malloc working group: "Should we continue to 
maintain a similarity between MDHCP and DHCP?" Eliminating this design 
constraint would allow us to make MDHCP simpler and more efficient. However, it 
would also eliminate any remaining hope for sharing code between MDHCP and DHCP 
implementations.

I would like to ask people who have implemented DHCP clients or servers to 
examine the current MDHCP draft (available from 
ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-malloc-mdhcp-01.txt) and answer 
the following questions.

1) Do you think that you might implement an MDHCP client or server?

2) If you were to do so, would you attempt to share code with your DHCP client 
or server?

3) Do you think that we should continue to maintain a similarity between MDHCP 
and DHCP? Why or why not?

Please send answers to the malloc mailing list ([email-masked]).

Thanks,

Steve Hanna
malloc WG co-chair