SLP Release Notes

What’s in this Version
SLP Features
Chapter 18
SLP Features
This chapter discusses the features, benefits, components, and working
of SLP.
SLP Overview
The ‘Service Location Protocol’ (SLP) is an emerging Internet standard
network protocol that provides a framework to allow networking
applications to discover the existence, location, and configuration of
networked services in enterprise networks. This protocol is designed to
simplify the discovery and use of network resources such as printers,
Web servers, fax machines, video cameras, files systems, backup devices
(tape drives), databases, directories, mail servers, calendars.
Traditionally, in order to locate services on the network, users of network
applications are required to supply the host name or network address of
the machine that supplies a desired service. SLP eliminates the need for
a user to know the name of a network host supporting a service. Rather,
the user supplies the desired type of service and set of attributes or
keywords, which describe the service. Based on that description, the
Service Location Protocol resolves the network address of the service of
the user. slp uses Uniform Resources Locators (URL’s) to locate services.
SLP implementation on HP-UX is based on OpenSLP version 0.8.0
developed by Caldera Systems, Inc.
Benefits of using SLP
The following are the key benefits of using SLP:
• Dynamic Services Tracking
When service instances are added on a network, they are quickly
visible to clients. When they are removed they are no longer visible.
For example, when a printer or a fax machine is added to a network,
they are quickly visible to the clients. When these devices are
removed, it is no longer visible. Services are described by configuring
values for the attributes, which are possible for that service.