James Carlson wrote:
> For WPAD to work, you need to have at least one of two things:
>
> - a host named "wpad.foo.com" (where "foo.com" is replaced by
> something that is in the configured DNS search path) that has a
> web server running and has a document named "/wpad.dat" with the
> PAC info.
>
> - a DHCP server offering up site-local option 252, with the contents
> of the string set to a URL that gives you the PAC information.
>
> I don't see where any special DHCP action on NWAM's part helps here.
> In both cases, these are bits of infrastructure that the network must
> be configured to have.
Maybe I've misunderstood the WPAD method... The method first
uses DHCP to obtain a CURL (which is the URL to retrieve the
configuration file). This is similar to the "Automatic proxy
configuration URL" in Firefox/Mozilla. So if NWAM just returns
something like
file:///etc/inet/nwam/proxy.pac
to the DHCPINFORM request, I thought the client would just
use the URL to get the PAC file. I checked the WPAD draft
carefully. So it seems that the method used in the CURL must
be through HTTP. I don't know if Firefox/Mozilla is "smart"
enough to understand a "file:///..." CURL...
> If I understand what you're proposing (and I'm not at all sure that I
> do), it might be possible to hack dhcpinfo(1) so that it lies to the
> user and says that site-local option 252 was received, and that it has
> a string provided by NWAM itself. But where is the web server
> required for that? Does NWAM fake up a web server in order to hand
> off the PAC file?
Yes, since the CURL is provided by NWAM, we can direct the client
to talk to NWAM and gives the client the PAC file.
> How does NWAM even figure out what to put into the
> PAC file?
Either
1. The sys admin can provide a PAC file for the appropriate
Environment.
2. NWAM generates a PAC file using the proxy server setting
associated with the Environment. It is straight forward to
do that.
> All of this sounds like a problem that's best solved by vendors of web
> proxies, not NWAM.
It is a proposal to allow existing WPAD clients, such as Firefox,
to work with NWAM without any changes. We may do other things
too. For example, we can make NWAM participate in Bonjour to give
back the correct proxy info, either as specified by the sys admin
or provided by the network. If we decide to do something in this
area, we probably want to do something which is platform
independent to get buy in from many communities. As Darren Kenny
suggested, Bonjour is one possibility.
--
K. Poon.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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