[ale] OT: device discovery

[Jason Fritcher]

David Hamm wrote:
> I have a device that runs Linux and is to be delivered into environments that 
> have little or no technical resources, DHCP may not be running either so I 
> need a way of "discovering" the device regardless of it's IP address.  
> 
> One technique is to maintain an alias on the interface (IE 172.16.*.*) and 
> temporarily ad an alias to the system on which the "discovery" will be run.
> 
> Can anyone suggest a more elegant method?

I think what you need here is ZeroConf, what Apple calls Bonjour. If 
dhcp is not available, you get an address by picking a random 
169.254.x.x address and make sure no one else on the network is using 
it. Making services available and finding other services on the network 
is handled using multicast dns. Check out www.zeroconf.org for all the 
details, relevant RFCs, etc.

-- 
  Jason K. Fritcher
   jkf at wolfnet.org

pub  1024D/85D1A012 2003-03-04 Jason K. Fritcher <jkf at wolfnet.org>
      Key fingerprint = AFA3 B816 DECD AC49 4B40  0C28 38F8 83E0 85D1 A012