INTERNET DRAFT Mike Henry Intel Corp. November 16, 1998 DHCP Option 61 UUID Type Definition Status of this Memo This document is an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas, and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet Drafts. Internet Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or made obsolete by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working draft" or "work in progress." Please check the "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ftp.ietf.org (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Notice All product and company names mentioned herein might be trademarks of their respective owners. Abstract The DHCP [1] mechanism for identifying the client as a unique entity is the DHCP client-identifier option (code 61) [2]. This draft defines for Option 61 a specific type and type number of a client-identifier based on generated UUIDs [3]. These identifiers are guaranteed to be, or are very, very likely to be unique across time and all clients. 1.0 Introduction DHCP Option 61 defines a client identifier that is expected to be unique within the network environment in which the client machine resides. It is the responsibility of the vendor or the system administrator to install/use identifiers that meet this requirement. It would be useful to have available the means to generate client identifiers that are unique regardless of where the client is installed. This would, for instance, allow client machine manufacturers to pre-install the client identifier with a very high degree of confidence that the identifier will be unique. Expires May 1999 [Page 1] November 16, 1998 2.0 Proposed change to DHCP Vendor Option 61 Client-identifier DHCP clients use this option to specify their unique identifier. This value is expected to be unique for all clients in an administrative domain. DHCP servers use this value to index their database of address bindings. DHCP servers SHOULD treat identifiers as opaque objects. For correct identification of clients, each client's client-identifier MUST be unique among the client-identifiers used on the subnet to which the client is attached, and SHOULD be unique across all domains. Vendors and system administrators are responsible for choosing client-identifiers that meet this requirement for uniqueness. The client identifier MAY be one of several types defined here: The client identifier MAY be a UUID (Universal Unique ID). In this case, the Type field MUST be 254 and the length field MUST be 18. The format and content of the UUID MUST be as specified in the RPC Specification from the Open Group [3] The client identifier MAY consist of type-value pairs similar to the 'htype'/'chaddr' fields defined in [3]. For instance, it MAY consist of a hardware type and hardware address. In this case the type field SHOULD be one of the ARP hardware types defined in STD2 [22]. A hardware type of 0 (zero) SHOULD be used when the value field contains an identifier other than a UUID or hardware address (e.g. a fully qualified domain name). The code for this option is 61, and its minimum length is 2. Code Len Type Client-Identifier +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- | 61 | n | t1 | i1 | i2 | ... +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Expires May 1999 [Page 2] November 16, 1998 4.0 References [1] Droms, R. "Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol", RFC 2131 [2] Alexander,S. and Droms, R., "DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extension" RFC 2132. [3] CAE Specification DCE 1.1: Remote Procedure Call Document Number: C706 Universal Unique Identifier Appendix Copyright (c) 1997 The Open Group http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9629399/toc.htm 5.0 Author's Address Mike Henry Intel Corporation, MS JF3-408 5200 NE Elam Young Pkwy Hillsboro, OR 97124 Phone: (503) 264-9689 Email: mike.henry@intel.com Expires May 1999 [Page 3]