IPv6/DHCPv6 Public Domain on Alpha Netbsd 4.4 (64 bits!!!)

[bound@zk3.dec.com]

DO NOT RESPOND TO THIS MAIL see below for implementation lists and contacts.

Over the past 6 months Yunzhou Li from the University of Singapore
working in conjunction with the University of New Hampshire, and Quaizar
Vohra from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) developed a public domain
version of DHCPv6 and IPv6 to run on the Carnegie Mellon port of Netbsd
4.4 on Digital Equipments Alpha 64 bit processor.  Support to Yunzhou,
Quaizar, and UNH for this effort was provided by the Digital IPv6 Alpha
UNIX team to assist where we were able.  This software is a 64bit
version of IPv6 that is available to the public domain without any
copyrights or other obligations other than the hope of sharing
enhancements and ideas into the Internet Software Community.

The DHCPv6 code is available now and the IPv6 stack will be available
soon this month (January 1997).  Though the DHCPv6 code is mean't for
Quaizar's IPv6 stack he did at UNH, I believe that Yunzhou's code can be
ported to other IPv6 stacks, using the IPv6 the Basic and Advanced API 
drafts as Yunzhou took the time to develop the code base in a most portable 
manner (e.g. using the database described in the book "Advanced Programming 
in the UNIX Environment" by Dr. Richard Stevens).

You can access the DHCPv6 code base at:

	ftp://sun4.iol.unh.edu/pub/dhcpv6

There are two types of compressed packages inclusive:

	dhcpv6-1.0.tar.gz	(for gunzip)
	dhcpv6-1.0.tar.Z	(for uncompress)

A documentation file exists based on the DHCPv6 draft but needs to be
updated to reflect the next version of the draft Charlie Perkins (IBM
Watson Labs) and I will submit for last call in January 1997 to reach 
Proposed Standard status.  But the code base should not be affected in 
any significant manner.  One objective we should have as a community is 
to add Dynamic Updates to DNS to the DHCPv6 Server code base Yunzhou has 
provided us using the latest release from Paul Vixie et al BIND T8.1A
and the necessary security enhancements from the DNSSEC work and other
implementation ideas being worked on in the community.

If you want to contact Yunzhou you can reach him for now at
yunzhou@ee.nus.sg or scip4166@leonis.nus.org.  Yunzhou will be moving to
the U.S. in late January 1997. You can reach Quaizar at qv@iol.unh.edu.

Implementation discussion for DHCPv6 will be discussed on a mail list
created for us by Ralph Droms Chair of the IETF DHC Working Group.
The list will be dhc-v6impl@bucknell.edu and you can subscribe to that
list as follows:

   Mail to listserv@bucknell.edu with body "help" or

   subscribe dhcp-v6impl Your Name

Once Quaizar releases his code base we can use our IPv6 implementors
list to discuss that software code base and report bugs etc... That list
is ipv6imp@munnari.oz.au.  This list has existed for some time for IPv6
implementors, and you can subscribe to it as follows:

  Mail to ipv6imp-request@munnari.oz.au.

Quaizar's implementation is also documented very well as part of his
Masters of Computer Science Thesis at UNH.

Also a recent Digial Technical Journal (DTJ) is out and if you can get 
a copy it describes well what and how we built IPv6 on Alpha DUNIX (written 
by Dan Harrington [now at Lucent Technologies] Matt Thomas, Jack McCann, 
and Jim Bound). Its Volume 8 Number 3 1996.  It is sent outside of Digital 
so what we wrote about is now public knowledge.  It also discusses some of
the paradigm and architectural trade-offs we made from an implementation
perspective, like taking advantage of a 64bit architecture.  I will
announce a WWW page pointer and add a hotlink to our
www.digital.com/info/ipv6/ page sometime in January 1997, where you will
also be able to determine how to get hard copies if you want them, or
view it online.

As a community we need to give a big thanks to the University of New
Hampshire (UNH), the UNH Interoperability Lab, University of Singapore,
Yunzhou Li, Quaizar Vohra, Digital Equipement Corporation, and the
Digital Alpha DUNIX IPv6 Team.  This work will provide us a working IPv6
64 bit platform on Alpha to further develop the growing public domain of
IPv6 software.  A special thanks to Carnegie Mellon for the vision and
on going work to port Netbsd 4.4 to the Alpha Platform, and Charlie Perkins
and the IETF DHC Working Group for taking on DHCPv6 as the first IETF WG
outside of the classic IPng Working group to produce an IPv6 spec that
we think has rough consensus and "running code".

Sincerely,
/jim

Jim Bound
Consulting Software Engineer
IPv6 Technical Director
Digital Equipment Corporation
bound@zk3.dec.com
603-881-0400