Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!lll-winken!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!widener!netnews.upenn.edu!scrolls.wharton.upenn.edu!shull From: shull@desci.wharton.upenn.edu (Christopher E. Shull) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.comm Subject: Dynamically assigning IP numbers on Ethernet? Message-ID: <43849@netnews.upenn.edu> Date: 29 May 91 04:13:16 GMT Sender: news@netnews.upenn.edu Organization: Decision Sciences, Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Lines: 35 Nntp-Posting-Host: scrolls-gw.wharton.upenn.edu Originator: shull@scrolls.wharton.upenn.edu Hi! One of the programs here at Penn bought a bunch of Mac IIcx's and the like without hard disks but with Ethernet cards, the goal being to allow fast access to programs and data on an Apple File Server, while protecting them from abuse, and avoiding the abuse vulnerability of local hard disks. Now they have a problem however. They want to use MacTCP and NCSA Telnet to connect to remote systems, but they have no way of assigning IP addresses to *all* the startup diskettes that are currently circulating, ie. in the hands of students, faculty and staff. Further, they are faced with people copying one another's startup diskettes and then working on two machines at the same time, which would lead to non-unique IP numbers, which would be bad! So, their choices seem to be: 1) buy hard disks for all the machines and try to protect them from abuse, or 2) find a way to dynamically assign IP numbers on Ethernet. Now I know the Cayman GatorBox does this on the LocalTalk side, but it does not seem to able to do this on the Ethernet side. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance! -Chris Christopher E. Shull shull@wharton.upenn.edu Decision Sciences Department shull@desci.wharton.upenn.edu The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania 3620 Locust Walk voice: 215/898-5930 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6366 fax: 215/898-3664 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" Admiral Farragut, USN, 1801-1870 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------