enhanced DHCP development meeting

[John Schafer]

At the June 2nd MJTS meeting there was a discussion of development work at
several schools on an enhanced DHCP system.

A meeting is planned on Tuesday, June 30th, 10am, to discuss DHCP
development projects that we are working on and how they may be applicable
to the MJTS group.

If you would like to attend this meeting please reply to me by this Wed.
evening. Thursday we will schedule a location.

 -- John
_______________________________________________________________________
John Schafer           Wireless LAN Project        voice:  734-763-8043
IT Communications      Campus Sites Network        pager:  734-495-4475
                       DHCP/DNS Service              fax:  734-936-7787

email:                 University of Michigan       (short) email page:
jbs@umich.edu          200 Hill St.                  jbs-page@umich.edu
                       Ann Arbor, MI  48109-3297
_______________________________________________________________________

Background Information
----------------------
DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is standard protocol for
assigning information (IP address, network mask, default router, name
server, time server, etc.) to clients (Windows, Macintosh, Unix, etc.) from
centrally managed DHCP servers. This improves network administration and
helps avoid problems such as duplicate IP address assignment. In a basic
DHCP system the server is loaded with Ethernet hardware addresses to
identify each client. When a client starts up the server assigns IP address
information based on the Ethernet hardware address.

The enhancements being written by several schools (MSU, UM, others?) include:
	Authentication (identify user before assigning address to client)
	Automatic registration (collect Ethernet hardware address at
	 authentication)
	Network security (restrict network access using switch VLANs)
	Java based administration tool (cross platform)

Some of the additional capabilities discussed on June 2nd were:
	Radius for distributed authentication
	Subnet policies to authorize based on group membership
	Modular design to enable use of different off-the-shelf DHCP servers
	Reliability through DHCP-Failover
	Roaming with dynamic-DNS