Erik Nordmark writes: > David Bustos wrote: > > Quoth Erik Nordmark on Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 09:28:13AM -0800: > >> Kacheong Poon wrote: > > ... > >>> Here are some questions. > >>> > >>> 1. Is LLA support essential to Solaris networking that we need > >>> to include it and make it work? > >> What problem are we trying to solve? > >> > >> Two laptops building a network between each other on the airplane? > >> (It might be that WiFi will be available in airplanes before we build > >> that solution.) > >> Some other use case? > > > > Aren't link-local addresses ideally suited to probing a network which > > doesn't offer DHCP? > > I haven't seen such a network for a long-long time.
I'm guessing that David has one. ;-} > Are we solving a current problem, or yesterday's problem? I agree that catering to non-DHCP networks seems like a somewhat silly thing to do, even though many of our present customers seem to be unnaturally adverse to using DHCP on things classed as "servers." One of the important deployment issues I've seen is that in some large corporations, the DHCP servers are run by the Windows support group. UNIX systems do not (and cannot) get addresses from them, and are not allowed (by policy) to have their own DHCP servers. It's an issue that has kept the old RARP-boot stuff in service long past its sell-by date. (It's an open list, or I'd name that big customer.) So, there's probably some argument for being able to handle a system that doesn't have an address as an exception case -- being able to find it, and then log in and correct it (probably by something like "echo xxx > /etc/hostname.hme0"). I doubt, at least at the enterprise level, that non-trival and long-lived uses of LLA would be at all feasible, as they're just too chaotic. The other plausible argument is to be able to detect and administer (through some means) any non-Solaris hosts that arrive on your network and start speaking LLA. As previously noted, you can't get there easily if you don't have either some LLA support or a strong assumption that LLA is present only on one interface. As for what it has to do with Bonjour, well, that's how you do the 'detecting.' -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
