Service Location Protocol
RFC 2165
Network Working Group J. Veizades
Request for Comments: 2165 @Home Network
Category: Standards Track E. Guttman
C. Perkins
Sun Microsystems
S. Kaplan
June 1997
Service Location Protocol
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract
The Service Location Protocol provides a scalable framework for the
discovery and selection of network services. Using this protocol,
computers using the Internet no longer need so much static
configuration of network services for network based applications.
This is especially important as computers become more portable, and
users less tolerant or able to fulfill the demands of network system
administration.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 3
2. Terminology 3
2.1. Notation Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2. Service Information and Predicate Representation . . . . 5
2.3. Specification Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Protocol Overview 6
3.1. Protocol Transactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2. Schemes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.1. The "service:" URL scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.3. Standard Attribute Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4. Naming Authority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5. Interpretation of Service Location Replies . . . . . . . 10
3.6. Use of TCP, UDP and Multicast in Service Location . . . . 10
3.6.1. Multicast vs. Broadcast . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.6.2. Service-Specific Multicast Address . . . . . . . 11
3.7. Service Location Scaling, and Multicast Operating Modes . 12
Veizades, et. al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 2165 Service Location Protocol June 1997
4. Service Location General Message Format 14
4.1. Use of Transaction IDs (XIDs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2. URL Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.3. Authentication Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.4. URL Entry Lifetime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Service Request Message Format 19
5.1. Service Request Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
5.2. Directory Agent Discovery Request . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5.3. Explanation of Terms of Predicate Grammar . . . . . . . . 24
5.4. Service Request Predicate Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.5. String Matching for Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6. Service Reply Message Format 28
7. Service Type Request Message Format 29
8. Service Type Reply Message Format 31
9. Service Registration Message Format 32
10. Service Acknowledgement Message Format 35
11. Service Deregister Message Format 37
12. Attribute Request Message Format 38
13. Attribute Reply Message Format 40
14. Directory Agent Advertisement Message Format 42
15. Directory Agents 43
15.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
15.2. Finding Directory Agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
16. Scope Discovery and Use 45
16.1. Protected Scopes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
17. Language and Character Encoding Issues 47
17.1. Character Encoding and String Issues . . . . . . . . . . 48
17.1.1. Substitution of Character Escape Sequences . . . 49
17.2. Language-Independent Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
18. Service Location Transactions 50
18.1. Service Location Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
18.2. No Synchronous Assumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
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