Subject: [dhcwg] question about duid in dhcpv6

From: 肖飏 <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 2009 00:03:52 +0800

Dear sir,

I am a graduate student from BUPT, China. Recently, I am doing some research
to add some feature to DHCPv6. However, I have a question about the usage of
DUID field to ask you.

Considering such a scenario: server wants to send client a message with the
Server Identifier Option preserving DUID field as a special address. When
client receives the message, it will try to interpret DUID as an address for
further processing, such as verification. I am confused because in the RFC
3315, it mentions that "Clients and servers MUST treat DUIDs as opaque
values and MUST only compare DUIDs for equality. Clients and servers MUST
NOT in any other way interpret DUIDs", so I want to ask you whether it
violates the RFC 3315?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best Regards.

Xiao Yang

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From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 13:48:23 -0700

On Oct 2, 2009, at 9:03 AM, 肖飏 wrote:
> Considering such a scenario: server wants to send client a message  
> with the Server Identifier Option preserving DUID field as a special  
> address. When client receives the message, it will try to interpret  
> DUID as an address for further processing, such as verification. I  
> am confused because in the RFC 3315, it mentions that "Clients and  
> servers MUST treat DUIDs as opaque values and MUST only compare  
> DUIDs for equality. Clients and servers MUST NOT in any other way  
> interpret DUIDs", so I want to ask you whether it violates the RFC  
> 3315?

I do not know if I understood your question correctly.   It sounds  
like you are asking if the client can check the server DUID against a  
list of server DUIDs to see if the server that sent the message is  
trusted.   Is that what you are asking?

If so, this should be okay, because you are following the RFC.    
Checking DUIDs against a list is comparing for equality.

If you are asking a different question, could you rephrase the  
question?   Perhaps describe precisely what you want to do with the  
DUID?