DHCP code in 2.0.4+

[Karl Auer]

On Tue, 2009-06-09 at 08:06 +0200, Alan DeKok wrote:
>   It does something.  But it doesn't meet the goal of reliability.

Ah, now that's different. But again, it's reliable *enough*. It does
leave a nice big hole for people like Nominum to prodyuce something that
is *very* reliable.

>   You've been lucky.

Perhaps you've just been unlucky? It's just as good an argument.

>   See the RELNOTES that is included with ISC for a
> series of bug fixes to the protocol.  Both the implementation and the
> protocol design have been changed substantially to avoid issues seen by
> real-live people in the field.

Good. That's to be expected and a good thing.

>   Yes.  A few quick tests demonstrated that failure.  See earlier
> messages in this thread.

Nope - "tests" do not show a theoretical failure. Careful argument shows
theoretical failure. Tests can only show a failure in an implementation
that *may indicate* a theoretical failure. I'd really like to see the
discussion of a theoretical failure (i.e., a case where failure must
occur if the protocol is implemented correctly). I'm not stating this as
some sort of challenge, I genuinely would like to see that discussion.

>   That doesn't inspire confidence.  It's not just a bug, which even
> FreeRADIUS has had from time to time.  The entire design of the protocol
> has mutated and changed based on discovery of something they missed...
> YEARS after the protocol was implemented.  See also the massive changes
> in the protocol between 3.0 and 3.1.

Um - that's normal. For any protocol! It's good.

>   i.e. ISC claims to implement the protocol.  If its performance is so
> much worse than Nomimum, then either (a), ISC didn't implement the
> protocol as spec'd, or (b) Nominum didn't.

Hm. Or Nominum implemented it better...

>   I really don't know.  I'm happy to say that both the protocol and the
> implementation are "less than optimal".

Oh, we're in full agreement there.

>   I'm sure that they developed their own standard for communication
> between Nominum servers.

Watching it happen suggests very strongly that they are following the
standard (such as it is) or something very similar.

Whatever: Go for it, and I look forward to the new FreeDHCP server :-)

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)

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