RFC 2322 — Management of IP Numbers by Peg-​​Dhcp

I have a num­ber of favor­ite RFC’s. Management of IP addresses by peg-​​dhcp is a testi­mony to solv­ing a prob­lem the simplest pos­sible way

Some Background

It wasn’t so long ago that DHCP didn’t work so well for all oper­at­ing sys­tems. Prior to 2000, MS Windows kind of worked, but most other oper­at­ing sys­tems were a bit patchy​.It was a huge prob­lem at the time.

At large con­fer­ences, the prob­lems of alloc­at­ing IP addresses to people with port­able com­puters was enorm­ous. So they developed RFC2322 — Management of IP Addresses using Pegs.

From RFC2322

So a way of cent­rally admin­is­trat­ing IP-​​numbers and giv­ing them out to people to use on their com­puters had to be devised. After some dis­cus­sion, the idea came up of using wooden clothes-​​pegs. Using peg has the fol­low­ing advant­ages in respect to other methods:

 — cheap
 — a peg is a ‘token’ and rep­res­ents one IP-​​number, there­fore mak­ing the status of the IP-​​number (alloc­ated or not alloc­ated) vis­ible.
 — a peg can be clipped to a net­work cable giv­ing a very clear view of where a given IP-​​number is in use.

Picture Attibution: http://​en​.wiki​pe​dia​.org/​w​i​k​i/Peg_DHCP

Wrap up

Sometimes a little his­tory is worth know­ing. DHCP serv­ers are a won­der­ful thing, but I am often sur­prised that they work so well… because once they were not so great.

Yeah, I am get­ting a little older.

Please rate this post:

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...