v6 & DSL / Cable modems [was: Private use of non-RFC1918 IP space (IPv6-MW)]

Tue Feb 10 21:41:41 UTC 2009

On Mon, 09 Feb 2009 21:11:50 -0500, TJ <trejrco at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your routers fail frequently?  And does your traffic continue to get
> forwarded?  Perhaps through another router?

More frequently than the DHCP server, but neither are "frequent" events.   
Cisco's software is not 100% perfect, and when you plug it into moderately  
unstable things like phone lines (DSL) and cable networks, those little  
bugs cause reloads -- you'd think they'd have better error handling, but  
they don't. (I don't buy millions in equipment from Cisco so they don't  
care about my problems.)  While I could use backup links, flip-floping  
between ISPs with different addresses is not ideal (and that's as true for  
v6 as v4.)

> Why is there a problem with RAs being the first step, possibly including
> prefix info or possibly just hinting @ DHCPv6?

Because it doesn't fit the needs of *every* network.  In fact, it's only  
"good enough" for very few networks.  As such it just adds more useless  
layers of bloat.

> Well, as it stands now the RA isn't useless.
...
> Also, it is not true in every case that hosts need a "lot more" than an
> address.
> In many cases all my machine needs is an address, default gateway and DNS
> server (cheat off of v4 | RFC5006 | Stateless DHCPv6).

It's useless.  It does NOT provide enough information alone for a host to  
function.  In your own words, you need a DNS server.  That is NOT provided  
by RA thus requires yet another system to get that bit of configuration to  
the host -- either entered manually, DHCPv6, or from IPv4 network  
configuration (ie. DHCP!)  Forcing this BS on the world is a colossal  
waste.  We've had a system to provide *ALL* the information a host needs  
or wants in the IPv4 world for years.  Why it's not good enough for IPv6  
is beyond me.

--Ricky