A typical networking appliance product, such as a computer or personal communication unit, which might or might not have a keyboard or monitor and which might not yet have configured except for some factory standard material incorporated into it, must boot when installed into a local area network (LAN). Then, a person near that appliance can configure the appliance by filling out forms or typing in parameters into screens or into a terminal.
Alternatively, the appliance, when it is turned on, might send a message out on the LAN asking for any machine in the environment to tell it everything it needs to know in order to be useful, and if there is a boot server configured on the LAN, it will respond to the appliance by giving it some pre-configured information that will help the appliance configure itself. The information required by the appliance might include the name of the appliance, the network address of the appliance, and possibly the pieces of software to be installed in the appliance.
Thus, known techniques for initializing the network parts of an operating system or an appliance can employ the receipt by the machine of packets on a local network. According to certain protocols, a certain kind of message is sent into the LAN to see whether a response is received from a particular kind of server in the LAN. A machine that is in the process of booting might broadcast a boot request packet into the LAN, so that the request could be seen by any computer attached to the immediate LAN but not by far-away computers.
This well-known technology has been used by many people, companies, and organizations for computers that are booting, even for simple things such as sending network configuration information to a user's personal computer. When a personal computer on a LAN boots up, one of the first things that it might do is to send out a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) request message or a boot request message, and a DHCP server or boot server on the LAN, configured by an information systems department, will reply to that request and authoritatively tell the personal computer its network configuration and a set of network parameters to use. This common technique for booting machines that require assistance in booting was employed by Sun Microsystems'® network workstations during the mid 1980s.
Today, it is quite common for computers in large organizations to be configured so that they will broadcast a specific kind of request in the form of packet when they are booting to obtain some kind of network configuration information. More specifically, according to a normal protocol for booting an appliance, the appliance, upon booting, uses software to broadcast a message in order to attempt to obtain network configurations and possibly other information required by the appliance. The appliance broadcasts a packet, which may be a bootp (booting protocol) request or a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) request, using well-known technologies. DHCP is a protocol designed for configuring hosts dynamically, which means that the configuration of the host is not stored on the host or appliance itself, but rather is obtained dynamically by sending the DHCP request to a boot server and receiving a response. The appliance receives, in response, a short message that has a table of settings that include several parameters such as, an IP address of a gateway or router to use when sending packets to a far-away place, IP address to be used as the address of the computer itself, IP address to be used for sending messages to a web proxy server or HTTP proxy server, addresses of computers that provide naming services (so-called domain name servers), and bit field that is used as a network mask (which helps indicate to the routing computer which set of addresses are addresses of locally connected computers, thereby allowing the routing computer to distinguish them from addresses of far-away computers).
These five or six pieces of information can go a long way in configuring the network communication part of the software on the appliance. This is well-known technology. For example, in every Microsoft® Windows® 95, 98, or Windows® NT® operating system, there is an option in the network control panel that allows a user, rather than specify the IP address of the computer manually by typing into a box, to tell the computer using a dialog check box that every time it boots it should broadcast a message and try to obtain the IP address from a DHCP server. Microsoft® Windows® NT® servers are provided with a built-in DHCP server that can provide this IP address to other computers upon request.
There are also products being sold into business locations or office environments that, instead of being configured by a boot server, can be configured by a person with a computer, such as a so-called “lap top” computer, that is attached through some kind of cable to configure the appliance. Other products can be configured through use of an LCD panel and buttons. For example, a printer or photocopy machine, when it is booted up, might display a small message on a screen saying that the user must proceed through menus and select certain options for printer or copier. Similarly, a telefacsimile machine might require a user to set the phone number and the number of rings after which the telefacsimile machine will auto-answer. These configuration settings are typically stored within the product itself. If a printer, photocopying machine, or telefacsimile machine is damaged and needs to be replaced, it will be necessary for a knowledgeable person to configure a new machine.
Similarly, certain Internet-connecting network products, of which there are many, use roughly the same kind of style of configuration as the above-mentioned machines. A user purchases a product that is intended to be connected to a local network. The user connects the product to the local network and interacts with the network product to tell it its configuration. The configuration is stored on the network product itself, and if it is ever necessary to replace the network product, it will be necessary for someone (typically a system administrator) to configure the replacement network product.