Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!sunee!erick
From: erick@sunee.waterloo.edu (Erick Engelke)
Subject: Re: Request For Info On Dynamically Acquiring IP Addresses At Boot
Message-ID: <1991Apr16.213454.13867@sunee.waterloo.edu>
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <41315@cup.portal.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1991 21:34:54 GMT
Lines: 48

In article <41315@cup.portal.com> Will@cup.portal.com (Will E Estes) writes:
>Can someone give me a reference to any research or commercial products
>that attempt to solve the problems of 1) allowing a PC or workstation
>to dynamically acquire an IP address at boot time, and 2) making it
>easier to install IP on a PC or workstation (i.e., an attempt to make
>things in general more dynamic so that each client doesn't have so
>much static information hard-coded into it at install time).
>

I do this for my 500+ PCs because I could not be botherred doing an installa-
tion for each.  You need some method of getting ip numbers, I have something
running similar to BOOTP which gets run in the batch file immediately after
the packet drivers is loaded.  My BOOTP-similar program can write the ip
address to a file or to an environment variable.

With NCSA, Clarkson CUTCP, and Waterloo TCP, you simply insert the line
with the correct ip address into the ASCII configuration file using some
automatic process such as the one I have described or you select BOOTP for the
TCP stacks which support it.

Beame&Whiteside's system includes an automated IP generation scheme which,
if memory serves me correctly, uses the lowest n bits of the Ethernet 
address where n is (32 - the number of bits in the network mask).  B&W
also supports the normal methods listed below.

For PCIP based products such as FTP, Wollongong, Beame&Whiteside,
etc., you can:
  1.  Use BOOTP (I think they all support it)
  2.  Use the configure program with a batch file 
  3.  figure out the data structure and write to it yourself

Since you ask about research, the following is a description of what
is being done, but not commercially available.

The Waterloo TCP system when running on Watstar (a proprietary DOS network) 
need not be configured with an IP address.
It uses one if so supplied, but otherwise requests the address from the 
the Watstar network.  The Watstar system responds with the computers IP
address, or generates a new one if the computer is new.  Addresses are
managed by the subnet's gateway, meaning the gateway never needs to
arp a station because it is the authority.

Erick
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Erick Engelke                                       Watstar Computer Network
Watstar Network Guy                                   University of Waterloo
Erick@Development.Watstar.UWaterloo.ca              (519) 885-1211 Ext. 2965