Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!gatech!dcatla!dnwcv From: dnwcv@dcatla.UUCP (William C. VerSteeg) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: BOOTP vendor support Keywords: network bootstrap protocols Message-ID: <7675@dcatla.UUCP> Date: 5 Aug 88 14:13:30 GMT References: <1425@sbcs.sunysb.edu> Reply-To: dnwcv@sune.UUCP (William C. VerSteeg) Organization: DCA Inc., Alpharetta, GA Lines: 20 I agree with the opinion that BOOTP is a good way to initialize a dumb device. We at Digital Communication Associates are designing new products that use BOOTP and TFTP to downline load code and configurations. A manufacturer of communications equipment has a great deal of impetous to support these protocols. He requires them to boot. We will support BOOTP on both our large, disk based systems and our small diskless units. In a typical configuration, the dumb devices will boot from the disk-based units. When a customer wants only the smaller, cheaper units, they will have to boot from another vendor's device. I am curious whether the minicomputer-oriented vendors will include support for BOOTP in their standard distributions. TWG, SRI, NRC, etc would be well served by including as much functionality as possible. However, I wonder if the minicomputer manufacturers will be as likely to support a protocol to load generic hardware. Would they fear selling fewer units of there own diskless stations and terminal servers ? I also would like to know of other BOOTP implementations to test against. Bill VerSteeg DCA