If the attribute 'interface' is not set in a 'domain' tag, the router tries to
dynamically receive and maintain an IP configuration for that domain by using
DHCP in the client role at all interfaces that connect to the domain. In the
DHCP discover phase, the router simply chooses the first DHCP offer that
arrives. So, no comparison of different DHCP offers is done. In the DHCP
request phase, the server is expected to provide an IP address, a gateway, a
subnet mask, and an IP lease time to the router. If anything substantial goes
wrong during a DHCP exchange, the router discards the outcome of the exchange
and goes back to the DHCP discover phase. At any time where there is no valid
IP configuration present at a domain, the domain does only act as DHCP client
and all other router functionality is disabled for the domain. A domain cannot
act as DHCP client and DHCP server at once. So, a 'domain' tag must either
have an 'interface' attribute or must not contain a 'dhcp-server' tag.
Ref #2534
An IPv4 config (for a domain/interface of the router) consists of
an IPv4 address, a subnet prefix specifier, an optional gateway
IPv4 address, and some flags that declare whether these fields and
the config as a whole are valid. To make the handling of those
tightly connected values easier and less error prone, we encapsulate
them in a new class.
Ref #2534
One can configure the NIC router to act as DHCP server at interfaces of a
domain by adding the <dhcp> tag to the configuration of the domain like
this:
<domain name="vbox" interface="10.0.1.1/24">
<dhcp-server ip_first="10.0.1.80"
ip_last="10.0.1.100"
ip_lease_time_sec="3600"
dns_server="10.0.0.2"/>
...
</domain>
The attributes ip_first and ip_last define the available IPv4 address
range while ip_lease_time_sec defines the lifetime of an IPv4 address
assignment in seconds. The IPv4 address range must be in the subnet
defined by the interface attribute of the domain tag and must not cover
the IPv4 address in this attribute. The dns_server attribute gives the
IPv4 address of the DNS server that might also be in another subnet.
The lifetime of an offered assignment is the configured round trip time of
the router while the ip_lease_time_sec is applied only if the offer is
requested by the client in time.
The ports/run/virtualbox_nic_router.run script is an example of how to
use the new DHCP server functionality.
Ref #2490
Apply the style rule that an accessor is named similar to the the underlying
value. Provide read and write accessors for each mandatory header attribute.
Fix some incorrect structure in the headers like with the flags field
in Ipv4_packet.
Ref #2490
