don provan
INTERNET-DRAFT                                              Novell, Inc.
                                                        13 November 1996
                                                     Expires 18 May 1997


                DHCP Options for Novell Directory Services
                  draft-provan-dhcp-options-dir-serv-00.txt


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.

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Abstract

   This document defines three new DHCP options for delivering
   configuration information to clients of the Novell Directory
   Services. The first option carries a list of NDS servers. The
   second option carries the name of the client's NDS tree. The third
   carries the initial NDS context. These three options provide an NDS
   client with enough information to connect to an NDS tree without
   manual configuration of the client.

1. Introduction

   Novell Directory Services is a distributed, replicated,
   hierarchical database of objects representing network resources
   such as nodes, services, users, and applications. An NDS client
   must be able to locate an NDS server in order to authenticate
   itself to the network and gain access to the database. In addition,
   the node's user is better served if the NDS client's attention is
   focused on the area of the NDS database likely to be of the most
   interest to the user.


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INTERNET-DRAFT         DHCP Options for NDS             13 November 1996

   This specification describes DHCP options [1] that carry NDS
   information to TCP/IP clients of NDS. The first option, the NDS
   Servers option, carries a list of NDS servers. The other two
   options, the NDS Tree Name option and the NDS Context option,
   provide the client with a default context within the NDS database.

2. NDS Servers Option

   This option specifies one or more NDS servers for the client to
   contact for access to the NDS database. Servers SHOULD be listed in
   order of preference.

   The code for this option is 85. The minimum length of this option
   is 4 octets, and the length MUST be a multiple of 4.

      Code   Len        Address 1               Address 2
     +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+--
     | 85  |  n  |  a1 |  a2 | a3  |  a4 |  a1 |  a2 |  a3 |  a4 |  ...
     +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+--

3. NDS Tree Name Option

   This option specifies the name of the NDS tree the client will be
   contacting. The tree name is formatted as a string of 16-bit
   Unicode characters, with each Unicode character transmitted in
   network order (most significant byte first).

   The code for this option is 86. Current implementations of NDS
   limit tree names to 32 Unicode characters (64 bytes), but
   implementations of this option are encouraged to support the
   maximum possible length for the option: 254 bytes. The length MUST
   be a multiple of 2.

       Code Len  NDS Tree Name
      +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
      | 86 | n  |   uc1   |   uc2   |   uc3   |  ...
      +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--

4. NDS Context Option

   This option specifies the initial NDS context the client should
   use. The context is formatted as a string of 16-bit Unicode
   characters, with each Unicode character transmitted in network
   order (most significant byte first).

   A single DHCP option can only contain 127 Unicode characters. Since
   an NDS context name can be longer than that, this option can appear
   more than once in the DHCP packet. The contents of all NDS Context
   options in the packet should be concatenated as suggested in the
   DHCP specification [2, page 23] to get the complete NDS context.


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INTERNET-DRAFT         DHCP Options for NDS             13 November 1996

   The code for this option is 87. The length of each individual
   context option MUST be a multiple of 2. The maximum length for each
   instance is 254, but, as just described, the option may appear more
   than once if the desired NDS context is longer than 127 Unicode
   characters. Current implementations of NDS limit contexts to 256
   Unicode characters (512 bytes), but implementations are discouraged
   from enforcing any specific maximum to the final concatenated NDS
   context.

       Code Len  Initial NDS Context
      +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--
      | 87 | n  |   uc1   |   uc2   |   uc3   |  ...
      +----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+--


References

   [1] S. Alexander and R. Droms.  DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor
       Extensions. draft-ietf-dhc-options-1533update-04.txt, May 1996.

   [2] R. Droms.  Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
       draft-ietf-dhc-dhcp-07.txt, May 1996.


Author's Address

   Don Provan
   Novell, Inc.
   2180 Fortune Drive
   San Jose, California, 95131

   Phone: +1 408 577 8440

   EMail: donp@Novell.Com


















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