Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
II. Design Considerations
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II. Design Considerations
II. Design Considerations
The following considerations guided our design of the RARP protocol.
- ARP and RARP are different operations. ARP assumes that every
host knows the mapping between its own hardware address and protocol
address(es). Information gathered about other hosts is accumulated
in a small cache. All hosts are equal in status; there is no
distinction between clients and servers.
On the other hand, RARP requires one or more server hosts to maintain
a database of mappings from hardware address to protocol address and
respond to requests from client hosts.
- As mentioned, RARP requires that server hosts maintain large
databases. It is undesirable and in some cases impossible to maintain
such a database in the kernel of a host's operating system. Thus,
most implementations will require some form of interaction with a
program outside the kernel.
- Ease of implementation and minimal impact on existing host
software are important. It would be a mistake to design a protocol
that required modifications to every host's software, whether or not
it intended to participate.
- It is desirable to allow for the possibility of sharing code with
existing software, to minimize overhead and development costs.
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Connected: An Internet Encyclopedia
II. Design Considerations