RFC 2132 (rfc2132) - Page 2 of 34

DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions

RFC 2132        DHCP Options and BOOTP Vendor Extensions      March 1997


   10.  Defining new extensions ................................... 31
   11.  Acknowledgements .......................................... 31
   12.  References ................................................ 32
   13.  Security Considerations ................................... 33
   14.  Authors' Addresses ........................................ 34

1. Introduction

   This document specifies options for use with both the Dynamic Host
   Configuration Protocol and the Bootstrap Protocol.

   The full description of DHCP packet formats may be found in the DHCP
   specification document [1], and the full description of BOOTP packet
   formats may be found in the BOOTP specification document [3].  This
   document defines the format of information in the last field of DHCP
   packets ('options') and of BOOTP packets ('vend').  The remainder of
   this section defines a generalized use of this area for giving
   information useful to a wide class of machines, operating systems and
   configurations. Sites with a single DHCP or BOOTP server that is
   shared among heterogeneous clients may choose to define other, site-
   specific formats for the use of the 'options' field.

   Section 2 of this memo describes the formats of DHCP options and
   BOOTP vendor extensions.  Section 3 describes options defined in
   previous documents for use with BOOTP (all may also be used with
   DHCP).  Sections 4-8 define new options intended for use with both
   DHCP and BOOTP. Section 9 defines options used only in DHCP.

   References further describing most of the options defined in sections
   2-6 can be found in section 12.  The use of the options defined in
   section 9 is described in the DHCP specification [1].

   Information on registering new options is contained in section 10.

   This document updates the definition of DHCP/BOOTP options that
   appears in RFC 1533.  The classing mechanism has been extended to
   include vendor classes as described in section 8.4 and 9.13.  The new
   procedure for defining new DHCP/BOOTP options in described in section
   10.  Several new options, including NIS+ domain and servers, Mobile
   IP home agent, SMTP server, TFTP server and Bootfile server, have
   been added.  Text giving definitions used throughout the document has
   been added in section 1.1.  Text emphasizing the need for uniqueness
   of client-identifiers has been added to section 9.14.








Alexander & Droms           Standards Track