CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_ Reported by Ralph Droms/Bucknell University Minutes of the Dynamic Host Configuration Working Group (DHC) The Current Mobile IP Protocol Charlie Perkins gave a presentation about the current Mobile IP protocol, and about the use of DHCP in giving HA (Home Agent) addresses to Mobile IP hosts. This use of DHCP will require the use of a new DHCP option. Charlie has contacted IANA, which has allocated DHCP Option 68 for HA address distribution. Charlie will publish an RFC describing the use of Option 68; the working group suggested a separate RFC as the use of Option 68 is more complicated than the use of the other DHCP options. Two New Messages Ralph Droms spoke to the group about two new messages, DHCPREVALIDATE and DHCPINFORM, that were proposed in San Jose. Weak response from the working group indicated that DHCPREVALIDATE was a bad idea (and will be deleted from the protocol specification) and DHCPINFORM was a good idea. DHCPv6 Jim Bound talked to the working group about DHCPv6. The majority of the group had not read the IPv6 specification which resulted in some questions due to lack of familiarity with IPv6. The group discussed the following issues: o What opaque identifier should be used for the Interface Token (as defined in the IPv6 stateless autoconfig specification)? o Transaction ID - is it really needed for the request/response protocol, and what are the precise semantics of its use? The consensus was that the transaction ID will be needed and the details of its definition will be included in the DHCPv6 specification. o The ``addrs available'' field was considered, as currently specified, to be of uncertain utility as the number of available addresses may change between client queries. o Bit field versus integer values as specifying the contents of a particular message. The consensus was that bit fields would meet the technical requirements. o The request/response model was reviewed and no objections were raised. Further discussion of the DHCPv6 specification will take place in the mailing list, to allow, if possible, completion of the specification prior to the Stockholm IETF. Greg Minshall's Model Greg Minshall gave an encore description of his model for server-server interaction in support of reliable operation of replicated DHCP servers. There was sufficient interest to warrant the formation of a new mailing list; the list will be set up and announced to the host-conf mailing list. Client and Server Authentication in DHCP Laird McCulloch made a pitch for client and server authentication in DHCP. There was some lively discussion about the utility of such authentication; any malicious host can simply guess or deduce the parameters handed out by DHCP, so denying DHCP parameters to a non-authenticated client gives no additional protection against those malicious hosts. However, after some discussion of the merits of not introducing any additional security holes through DHCP, protection against accidental initialization of unwanted hosts, and the need for protection against spoofing servers, the working group agreed that an authentication mechanism would be of some value. The consensus was that a three-way private key exchange, perhaps CHAP from PPP, would be easy to add to DHCP through the use of option fields. A discussion of this authentication scheme will take place on the host-conf mailing list. Items From The Floor There was discussion of ``freely available'' DHCP implementations -- there is an implementation from the WIDE project in Japan, and hints that a freely available implementation may be considered by another group -- and an expression of interest in a bake-off in the San Francisco area some time in June.