Heres my take on SLP...someone correct me if I slip up somewhere. SLP stands for Service Location Protocol and is implemented by Netware servers running TCP/IP as a means for clients and servers to locate the proper network resources.
Back when IPX was the standard protocol on NetWare systems, there was a certain component of IPX called SAP (Service Advertising Protocol). With SAP, the netware server broadcasts out to the network a list of all available service it offers, in adition to any services it has learned from listening to SAP broadcasts from other servers. These service advertisements are continually broadcast onto the network every 60 seconds.
Moving to an IP environment, Novell implemented SLP to replace SAP and function roughly in the same way. Just like SAP, its a list that gets built over time of learned network resources available. Every resource (typically login, the actual server, NDPS brokers, rconsole, etc...) gets registered. The big difference is that SLP doesn't broadcast like SAP does. Clients will by default, multicast for the services desired, but the really cool thing about SLP is you can designate a server to be a Directory Agent (DA). Instead of multicasting, the clients directly contact the DA. This DA answers all service requests. Basically its a more efficient way than SAP of service location.
