[ale] OT: device discovery

[ale at spinnerdog.com (David Hamm)]

Hi,

I have a device that runs Linux and is to be delivered into environments that 
have little or no technical resources, DHCP may not be running either so I 
need a way of "discovering" the device regardless of it's IP address.  

One technique is to maintain an alias on the interface (IE 172.16.*.*) and 
temporarily ad an alias to the system on which the "discovery" will be run.

Can anyone suggest a more elegant method?

Ideally the "discovery" application would allways find the device, obtain it's 
IP address and take the necessary steps to establish communications.