Service Location Protocol - Network Protocol

Network Protocol

SLP is a packet-oriented protocol. Most packets are transmitted using UDP, but TCP can also be used for the transmission of longer packets. Because of the potential unreliability of UDP, SLP repeats all multicasts several times in increasing intervals until an answer has been received. All devices are required to listen on port 427 for UDP packets, SAs and DAs should also listen for TCP on the same port. Multicasting is used extensively by SLP, especially by devices that join a network and need to find other devices.

The operation of SLP differs considerably, depending on whether a Directory Agent (DA) is in the network or not. When a client first joins a network it multicasts a query for DAs on the network. If no DA answers it will assume that it is in a network without DAs. It is also possible to add DAs later, as they multicast a 'heartbeat' packet in a predefined interval that will be received by all other devices. When an SA discovers a DA, it is required to register all services at the DA. When a service disappears the SA should notify the DA and unregister it.

In order to send a query in a network without a DA, the UA sends a multicast UDP packet that contains the query. All SAs that contain matches will send a UDP answer to the UA. If the answer is too large to fit into a single UDP packet, the packet will be marked as "overflown" and the UA is free to send the query directly to the SA using TCP, which can transmit packets of any size.

In order to send a query in a network with a DA, the UA will send the query packet to the DA using either UDP or TCP. As every SA must register all services with the DA, the DA is able to fulfill the request completely and simply sends the result back to the UA.