RFC 3224 (rfc3224) - Page 2 of 10

Vendor Extensions for Service Location Protocol, Version 2

RFC 3224             Vendor Extensions for Service          January 2002


1.0 Introduction

   The Service Location Protocol, Version 2 [1] defines a number of
   features which are extensible.  This document clarifies exactly which
   mechanisms can be used to that end (Sections 3-5) and which cannot
   (Section 6).  This document updates [1], specifying conventions that
   ensure the protocol extension mechanisms in the SLPv2 specification
   will not possibly have ambiguous interpretations.

   This specification introduces only one new protocol element, the
   Vendor Opaque Extension.  This Extension makes it possible for a
   vendor to extend SLP independently, once the vendor has registered
   itself with IANA and obtained an Enterprise Number.  This is useful
   for vendor-specific applications.

   Vendor extensions to standard protocols come at a cost.

      -  Vendor extensions occur without review from the community.
         They may not make good engineering sense in the context of the
         protocol they extend, and the engineers responsible may
         discover this too late.

      -  Vendor extensions preclude interoperation with compliant but
         non-extended implementations.  There is a real danger of
         incompatibility if different implementations support different
         feature sets.

      -  By extending SLPv2 privately, ubiquitous automatic
         configuration is impossible, which is the primary benefit of a
         standard service discovery framework.

   For these reasons, registration of service templates with IANA is
   strongly encouraged!  This process is easy and has proved to be rapid
   (taking less than 2 weeks in most cases).

1.1 Terminology

   In this document, the key words "MAY", "MUST", "MUST NOT",
   "optional", "recommended", "SHOULD", and "SHOULD NOT", are to be
   interpreted as described in [2].

   Service Location Protocol terminology is defined in [1].  IANA
   registration terminology is defined in [5].








Guttman                     Standards Track