WPAD and DHCP Servers

[Trevor DeVore]

Hi,

In my quest to come up with a library that plays nicely with proxy  
servers in as many situations as possible I'm working on an  
implementation of the WPAD protocol for Revolution. When looking for  
the wpad.dat file you first ask for option 252 from a local DHCP  
server and the server will return a string pointing to wpad.dat. If  
that doesn't work then you move on to DNS and look for the wpad  
subdomain using the host name as the starting point.

I think I have the DNS portion figured out and I've coded an  
implementation using 'the hostName' and hostNameToAddress() (not  
tested yet).

I'm a little lost when it comes to the DHCP however. I am assuming  
that I should try to contact the DHCP server as defined in the network  
settings. On my local network that is 192.168.1.1. What I'm not sure  
about is how to send a request for option 252.

Is there anybody out there who is familiar with WPAD, DHCP and how to  
talk to a DHCP server an could share some insight?

Thanks,

-- 
Trevor DeVore
Blue Mango Learning Systems
ScreenSteps: http://www.screensteps.com
Developer Resources: http://revolution.bluemangolearning.com

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