Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!Portia!Jessica!morgan
From: morgan@Jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re: what is dynamic IP address assignment
Message-ID: <3921@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 11 Oct 88 03:51:13 GMT
References: <8810091904.AA06880@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Sender: news@Portia.Stanford.EDU
Reply-To: morgan@Jessica.stanford.edu (RL "Bob" Morgan)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 31


Paraphrasing Craig Partridge, the two types of dynamic IP address
assignment are:

1) assigning a (more or less permanent) address to a new host on the net;

2) assigning a temporary address to a host that happens to need one.

Craig thinks that most people are thinking about 1) rather than 2).  I
think not.  Far from 2) being a convenience when a visiting dignitary
comes to town with their Ethernet-adapter-equipped portable PC, I
think it should be the way most machines on the net get their
addresses.  I invite everyone who thinks dynamic IP address assignment
is a simply a cute idea to accompany me the next time I have to assist
a former secretary or part-time graduate student who has been put in
charge of a departmental network here, and help me explain IP
addresses, BOOTP tables, and default gateways.  This sort of stuff is
tricky yet tedious, so unskilled people screw it up, and skilled
people are too busy doing something else.  If we can't design these
nets so that the standard end-user station can start using the net
with ABSOLUTELY NO CONFIGURATION, then we have failed.

What distinguishes a station as a candidate for dynamic addressing is
that it supports only client-side software.  I think "client-only"
stations may be different enough from "hosts" (as well as far more
numerous) that it's worth thinking about how their "requirements"
differ (ala the ever-forthcoming RFC).  Yes?  No?

 - RL "Bob" Morgan
   Networking Systems
   Stanford