Service location protocol: automatic discovery of IP network services

As long as configuration remains difficult, network administration will be expensive, tedious, and troublesome and users-especially mobile users-will be unable to take full advantage of network services. SLP is an IETF Proposed Standard for enabling network-based service discovery and automatic configuration of clients. It provides for fully decentralized operation and scales from a small, unadministered network up to an enterprise network. The essential function of SLP is service discovery, but it has also been designed to support security extensibility, browsing operations, and operation over IPv6. The article describes SLP's operation.