SLP(7P)SLP(7P)NAMEslp - Service Location Protocol
DESCRIPTION
The Service Location Protocol (SLP) is a dynamic service discovery pro‐
tocol that runs on top of the Internet Protocol (IP). The protocol is
specified by the IETF standard-track documents RFC 2165, RFC 2608, RFC
2609; the API is documented in RFC 2614. .
There are two components to the SLP technology. The first is a daemon,
slpd(1M), which coordinates SLP operations. The second is a software
library, slp_api(3SLP), through which processes access a public API.
Both components are configured by means of the SLP configuration file,
slp.conf(4).
The SLP API is useful for two types of processes:
Client Applications
Services and service information can be
requested from the API. Clients do not need to
know the location of a required service, only
the type of service, and optionally, the service
characteristics. SLP will supply the location
and other information to the client through the
API.
Server Processes
Programs that offer network services use the SLP
API to advertise their location as well as other
service information. The advertisement can
optionally include attributes describing the
service. Advertisements are accompanied by a
lifetime; when the lifetime expires, the adver‐
tisement is flushed, unless it is refreshed
prior to expiration.
API libraries are available for both the C and Java languages.
SLP provides the following additional features:
o slpd(1M) can be configured to function as a transparent
directory agent. This feature makes SLP scalable to the
enterprise. System administrators can configure directory
agents to achieve a number of different strategies for scal‐
ability.
o SLP service advertising and discovery is performed in
scopes. Unless otherwise configured, all discovery and all
advertisements are in the scope default. In the case of a
larger network, scopes can be used to group services and
client systems so that users will only find those services
which are physically near them, belong to their department,
or satisfy the specified criteria. Administrators can con‐
figure these scopes to achieve different service provider
strategies.
o Services may be registered by proxy through a serialized
registration file. This is an alternative to registering
services through the API. See slpd.reg(4) for more informa‐
tion.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌────────────────────┬─────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│CSI │ CSI-enabled │
├────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │ Standard │
├────────────────────┼─────────────────┤
│MT-Level │ MT-Safe │
└────────────────────┴─────────────────┘
SEE ALSOslpd(1M), slp_api(3SLP), slp.conf(4), slpd.reg(4), attributes(5)
Guttman, E., Perkins, C., Veizades, J., and Day, M., RFC 2608, Service
Location Protocol, Version 2, The Internet Society, June 1999.
Guttman, E., Perkins, C., and Kempf, J., RFC 2609, Service Templates
and Service: Schemes, The Internet Society, June 1999.
Kempf, J. and Guttman, E., RFC 2614, An API for Service Location, The
Internet Society, June 1999.
Veizades, J., Guttman, E., Perkins, C., and Kaplan, S., RFC 2165, Ser‐
vice Location Protocol, Network Working Group, 1997.
Nov 17, 1999 SLP(7P)
