Service Location Protocol (svrloc) ---------------------------------- Charter Last Modified: 27-Oct-97 Current Status: Active Working Group Chair(s): John Veizades Erik Guttman Internet Area Director(s): Jeffrey Burgan Thomas Narten Internet Area Advisor: Thomas Narten Mailing Lists: General Discussion:srvloc@corp.home.net To Subscribe: srvloc-request@corp.home.net Archive: http://www.srvloc.org/mail_archive Description of Working Group: The Service Location Protocol is a decentralized, lightweight, scalable and extensible protocol for service discovery within a site. It allows but does not require centralized administration. Even when security, administrative policies or convenience require centralization (say in large enterprise deployments) the protocol requires very little administration. The protocol limits its use of multicast and broadcast as much as possible to conserve network bandwidth. Moreover, the protocol is extensible to arbitrary service advertisement and discovery and supports multiple languages and character set encodings. The working group will document procedures for discovering services, and standardize "service:" schemes, which are definitions for resource and service URLs. The focus of the working group will be on completing various documents which describe how to do service discovery and how to standardize service definitions which will be advertised and discovered. - Interactions between Service Location Protocol and other enterprise naming and directory service protocols will be explored, defined, and standardized. - Schemes for popular services will be discussed, and standardization efforts with other working groups explored as needed. - Operational experiences and security procedures will be discussed and documented as best current practice. - Service Type attribute definitions will be standardized by registering a 'Service Template' with IANA. This document will also describe how Service Types and Directory Schemas can be made interoperable. The Service Location Protocol can then be used to populate a directory service dynamically. - An Application Programmers Interface has been developed to allow a uniform mechanism for applications to make use of Service Location Protocol functions, which will be supplied as an informational document. - The Service Location Protocol itself will be revised and improved on, continuing it along the standards track. Goals and Milestones: Done Open discussion and determine if a working group should be formed. Done Continue discussion trying to refine the problem statement and possible resolutions. Done Issue a standards track protocol specification for the Service Location Protocol Done Define an authentication mechanism for Service Location. Nov 97 Submit an API for the Service Location Protocol to IESG for consideration as an Informational RFC. Nov 97 Define a Service Discovery procedure for use in site as well as internet applications. Also define a mechanism for advertising services using DNS TXT records. Nov 97 Submit the modifications to SLP for implementing it on IPv6 to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard. Nov 97 Submit a service: URL and service template definition as an Internet-Draft. Dec 97 Submit a revised I-D of the Service Location Protocol reflecting implementation experience and working group consensus on open issues. Jan 98 Review the status of the SVRLOC WG. Revise the charter or shut down. Internet-Drafts: Posted Revised I-D Title ------ ------- ------------------------------------------ Jun 96 Oct 97 Finding Stuff (How to discover services) Jul 96 Feb 97 Service Location Modifications for IPv6 Nov 96 Oct 97 Service Templates and service: Schemes Nov 96 Mar 97 An API for Service Location Feb 97 Oct 97 Advertising Services (Providing information to support service discovery) Feb 97 Oct 97 The 'wp:' and 'yp:' Abstract Service Types Jul 97 New Wide Area Network Service Location Jul 97 New Conversion of LDAP Schemas to and from SLP Templates Jul 97 New Definition of lpr: URLs for use with Service Location Request For Comments: RFC Stat Published Title ------- -- ---------- ----------------------------------------- RFC2165 PS Jun 97 Service Location Protocol