Mac OS X 10.7, still no DHCPv6

Mon Feb 28 02:01:44 UTC 2011

On Feb 27, 2011, at 3:41 PM, Tore Anderson wrote:

> * Owen DeLong
> 
>> On Feb 27, 2011, at 4:21 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
>> 
>>> NOC: are you running a macintosh?
>>> User: yes, how did you guess?
>>> NOC: because it is broken.  get vista.
>> 
>> While I'm as big a fan of IPv6 as anybody, I think in a comparison of
>> relative brokenness, Mac comes out quite favorably compared to
>> Vista in spite of their DHCPv6 deficiencies.
> 
> Absolutely not. Mac OS X does not do proper source address selection
> according to RFC 3484. That makes it do things like preferring the use
> of link-local IPv6 addresses when connecting to global dual-stacked
> destinations, which of course won't work - as a result a 75 second long
> timeout is incurred for every single outgoing TCP connection. Versions
> earlier than 10.6.5, still in use by a considerable amount of users,
> will also prefer the use of 6to4 to IPv4, again something which is
> causing lots of brokenness. (Windows ICS is responsible for causing lots
> of OS X hosts to have 6to4 addresses in the first place, though.)
> 
> OS X also has a bug that will make it interpret a router lifetime of 0
> in a RA as infinite, causing more troubles when found behind IPv6 CE
> routers using ULAs in compliance with I-D.ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router,
> one example of which is the AVM FritzBox as far as I understand.
> 
You're talking about IPv6-specific brokenness. I'm talking about overall
OS brokenness.

On IPv6, yes, Micr0$0ft actually (finally) got something mostly right.

On just about everything else... Windows... Nah, can't say I miss it at all.

Owen