Service Location Protocol (svrloc)
----------------------------------
Charter
Last Modified: 05/31/2001
Current Status: Concluded Working Group
Chair(s):
Erik Guttman <erik.guttman@sun.com>
Internet Area Director(s):
Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>
Erik Nordmark <erik.nordmark@sun.com>
Internet Area Advisor:
Thomas Narten <narten@us.ibm.com>
Mailing Lists:
General Discussion:srvloc@srvloc.org
To Subscribe: srvloc-request@srvloc.org
Archive: http://www.srvloc.org/hypermail/index.htm
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.
Done Submit an API for the Service Location Protocol to IESG for
consideration as an Informational RFC.
Done 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.
Done Submit the modifications to SLP for implementing it on IPv6
to IESG for consideration as a Proposed Standard.
Done Submit a service: URL and service template definition as an
Internet-Draft.
Done Submit a revised I-D of the Service Location Protocol
reflecting implementation experience and working group
consensus on open issues.
Done Review the status of the SVRLOC WG. Revise the charter or
shut down.
Internet-Drafts:
No Current Internet-Drafts.
Request For Comments:
RFC Stat Published Title
------- -- ----------- ------------------------------------
RFC2165 PS JUN 97 Service Location Protocol
RFC2608 PS JUN 99 Service Location Protocol, Version 2
RFC2609 PS JUN 99 Service Templates and service: Schemes
RFC2614 I JUN 99 An API for Service Location
RFC2926 I OCT 00 Conversion of LDAP Schemas to and from SLP Templates
RFC3111 PS MAY 01 Service Location Protocol Modifications for IPv6