I'm trying to announce to the host connected to the Ethernet interface.
Yes the digital radio does have other interfaces, but I believe that only
one type of interface (ethernet or PPP) will be active at any one time,
i.e. we won't have the PPP interface working at the same time as the
Ethernet. At least that is not the plan so far.
To bring you up to date: I started down the path of using the Limited
Broadcast address and an ICMP Echo Request message to get the Digital Radio
to announce it's IP address.
I wrote a simple program that sends an ICMP Echo Request message to the
limited broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. This appeared to work when
testing it with many of the hosts on our network, i.e. numerous hosts
responded with their own IP address... However, the digital radio does NOT
respond because the VxWorks operating system apparently doesn't support
answering the limited broadcast address...(The documentation suggests that
you have to set the broadcast address for the interface, and
255.255.255.255 is illegal). So that method looks like a dead end. That
was going to be the easiest and the cleanest.
The next method I plan to try is to use a Multicast address to exchange
maybe an ICMP Echo Request message (or some other message) with one
another. First idea is to identify a Multicast address to use to do this.
I want to try and use one of the predefined multicast addresses. Any
suggestions from anyone as to which one might be appropriate for this kind
of thing?
If the above methods fail then my final attempt will be to implement a
minimum Service Location Protocol V2 Implementation in the digital radio,
and have it announce some kind of configuration service. The host could
then look for this configuration service and get the information it needs
from the SLP messages. The thing I like about this method is that it is a
standard RFC, and I can later expand on the other services that I might
want the digital radio to announce.
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Rick.
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael B. Bellopede
[SMTP:Michael(_dot_)CTR(_dot_)Bellopede(_at_)tc(_dot_)faa(_dot_)gov]
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2000 7:20 AM
To: Richard C. Ascheri
Subject: RE: Digital Radio Configuration Question
If you have more than one physical interface, each with its own IP, than
this device definitely is considered a router. Are you trying to announce
the IP of the ethernet interface to the connected ethernet host (via
ethernet interface), or announce to a host communicating with the radio
interface?
-Michael B. Bellopede
Michael(_dot_)CTR(_dot_)Bellopede(_at_)tc(_dot_)faa(_dot_)gov
"There is no spoon."
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard C. Ascheri
[mailto:rascheri(_at_)electra(_dot_)rsc(_dot_)raytheon(_dot_)com]
Sent: Monday, April 17, 2000 1:32 PM
To: 'ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org'
Subject: Digital Radio Configuration Question
Hello,
I'm a Systems Engineer at Raytheon Company. I have been working on the
development of a digital IP based radio for some time now. The radio has
an Ethernet interface, PPP interface, and an ADDSI X.25 interface.
My question relates to the configuration of the radio. To configure the
radio we have an implementation of SNMPv2. This implementation allows the
radio to be configured over the Ethernet or PPP interfaces using the SNMPv2
protocol.
My question relates to configuring the radio without knowing it's IP
address. I understand that SNMP requires the IP address of the device you
want to configure.
I am interested in a standard method of announcing the IP address of the
Ethernet interface. This would allow a configuration tool to look for the
announcements and then send SNMP configuration messages to modify the
radios configuration. For this scenario you can assume that the radio will
be attached to a single host over an Ethernet interface. There will be no
other hosts or radios on the network. Assume that the IP address of the
radio is NOT known. It could be set to anything, even an address outside
of the range of the hosts subnet.
I have looked at a number of RFC's but have found these two that may work:
RFC 1256 - ICMP Router Discovery. This rfc does announce the IP address,
however, for this scenario I'm not interested in saying that this radio is
the next hop gateway. Given that the radio has numerous interfaces and an
TCP/IP stack you might consider this a router. However, I don't really
feel that this RFC directly relates to solving the configuration problem.
The host is not really looking for it's next hop gateway. It's looking
for devices that can be configured through SNMP.
RFC 2608 - Service Location Protocol v2. This rfc does imply that I could
create a "Configuration-Service" and announce its availability using the
SNMP protocol. This actually sounds like the right kind of solution to my
problem.
But now I'm wondering whether or not there is something else that I haven't
found. Maybe something in the works, as a draft, or a working group that
is responsible for looking at these kinds of problems.
Any and all comments would be gratefully appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Rick.
Richard C. Ascheri Raytheon Company
Principle Systems Engineer 1801 Hughes Drive
Network Technology Group Fullerton, CA.
92836
C3I Systems http://www.raytheon.com
rascheri(_at_)electra(_dot_)rsc(_dot_)raytheon(_dot_)com