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I would like to design several devices that receive simple commands from a single controller device all residing on the same layer 2 switch. Is there a protocol that allows me to do this without assigning IP addresses to each one?

I can't use DHCP or link-local automatic addressing as my controller device WILL have a variable static IP assigned to it for communicating with other layer 3 devices.

Ideally I could use the controller device to discover all receiving devices on the layer 2 network and store a table of their physical addresses. Then I could just send generic packets directly to the MAC addresses somehow. This would allow the receiver devices to be added in a Plug-and-Play manner.

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  • Why not use mDNS to discover the devices' IP addresses, then communicate over IP with those? It should work with any mix of static, DHCP, and/or APIPA addresses (as long as the non-APIPA ones are in the same subnet).
    – Gordon Davisson
    Mar 17, 2021 at 9:38
  • Unfortunately my controller is just software on a computer that must have a static IP address. Is there a way I can communicate with APIPA devices from the non-APIPA controller?
    – Adam Fontana
    Mar 18, 2021 at 2:33
  • As long as everything conforms to RFC 3927, they'll be able to communicate just fine. If they support IPv6, it's even easier because all IPv6 hosts should have link-local (fe80::/10) addresses in addition to any other addresses they may happen to have.
    – Gordon Davisson
    Mar 18, 2021 at 4:18

2 Answers 2

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Practically speaking, Ethernet and WiFi are the only 2 L2 protocols in wide use and fully supported by all modern operating systems.

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as my controller device WILL have a variable static IP assigned to it

Very, very bad design. You should enable DHCP and provide a reasonable fallback, preferrably to Zeroconf aka APIPA aka link-local addresses, using 169.254.0.0/16 addresses.

If you use IPv4, don't forget about IPv6.

Alternatively, you can run an application protocol directly on top of Ethernet but that prohibits routing (as does Zeroconf). Make sure you use a proper Ethertype (for a commercial protocol, it should be registered with IEEE). Node discovery should be done using multicast.

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  • Unfortunately, the IP address of the controller is not in my control, nor is the DHCP server. The only think I can rely on is the receiver devices being on the same physical network.
    – Adam Fontana
    Mar 16, 2021 at 22:20
  • You design a device but cannot control its IP address? Then I'm afraid your question is off-topic here... devices on the same physical network is a clear pointer towards link-local addresses.
    – Zac67 ♦
    Mar 17, 2021 at 6:53
  • I'm not designing the controller device. The controller is just software running on an existing computer, and unfortunately I have no control of the IP settings. If I use link-local addresses for the receivers, wouldn't the controller need to also have a link-local address?
    – Adam Fontana
    Mar 18, 2021 at 2:25
  • Sure - IP generally requires a common subnet or proper routing.
    – Zac67 ♦
    Mar 18, 2021 at 6:42

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