Re: new issue: LL34 Better transition to routable from v4LL using DHCP

Mika,

I agree.  However, all we can do is suggest this as useful to the
DHC WG.  I am cc:ing the dhcwg on my reply.  I don't mean to start
a long sequence of cross posts, but in this particular area it may
be a good idea.

Thanks,

Erik

Mika Liljeberg wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 15:35, Robert Elz wrote:
> 
>>On the other hand, I'm not sure that I'd be happy to have a LAN
>>with perhaps hundreds of hosts (maybe thousands) all sending
>>continuous streams of broadcast packets looking for a DHCP server.
>>(A thousand hosts, with a 25 second (avg) delay is 40 broadcast
>>packets a second, which is starting to get too high - make that
>>5000 hosts, which is not unreasonable in some switched environments,
>>and you're at 200 broadcast packets a second - which is beyond
>>inconvenient and into extremely annoying).
> 
> 
> Frequent polling is also a very bad idea from the standpoint of power
> efficiency. Not all devices are tethered to a power outlet.
> 
> This is really a DHCP issue but it would seem preferable to have DHCP
> servers announce their presence (and readines to assign addresses) with
> a periodic broadcast, rather than have all the clients broadcasting in
> an effort to locate a server.
> 
> A new DHCPADVERTISE message could easily be specified in a way that is
> fully compatible with current DHCP usage.
> 
> Alternatively, I suppose servers could just periodically broadcast an
> unsolicited DHCPOFFER, but I haven't really thought this through. There
> may be reasons why this would not be a good idea.
> 
> 	MikaL
>