IPALLOC(3R)

NAME
ipalloc - determine or temporarily allocate IP address

PROTOCOL
/usr/include/rpcsvc/ipalloc.x

AVAILABILITY

Available only on Sun 386i systems running a SunOS 4.0.x release or earlier. Not a SunOS 4.1 release feature.

DESCRIPTION

ipalloc() is the protocol for allocating the IP address that a system should use.

PROGRAMMING

#include <rpcsvc/ipalloc.h>

The following RPC calls are available in version 2 of this protocol:

NULLPROC
    This is a standard null entry, used to ping a service to measure overhead or to discover servers.

IP_ALLOC
    Returns an IP address corresponding to a given Ethernet address, if possible. This RPC must be called using DES authentication, from a client authorized to allocate IP addresses. A cache of allocated addresses is maintained.

    The first action taken on receipt of this RPC is to verify that no existing mapping between the etheraddr and the netnum exists in the Network Information Service (NIS) database. If one is found, then that is returned. Otherwise, an internal cache is checked, and if an entry is found there for the given etheraddr on the right network, that entry is used. If no address was found either in the NIS database or in the cache, a new one may be allocated and returned, and the ip_success status is returned.

    If an unusable entry was found in the cache, this RPC returns ip_failure status.

IP_TONAME
    Used to determine whether a given IP address is known to the NIS service, since NIS allows a delay between the posting of an address and its availability in some locations on the network.

IP_FREE
    This RPC is used to delete ipaddr entries from the cache when they are no longer needed there. It requires the same protections as the IP_ALLOC RPC.

SEE ALSO
ipallocd(8C), pnpboot(8C)

NOTES

The Network Information Service (NIS) was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP). The functionality of the two remains the same; only the name has changed.