The stupidity of trying to "fix" DHCPv6

Matthew Palmer mpalmer at hezmatt.org
Sun Jun 12 15:39:39 UTC 2011


On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 01:04:41PM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> On 12 jun 2011, at 12:35, Daniel Roesen wrote:
> 
> > Could you point to any RFC which implies or explicitly states that
> > DHCPv6 MUST NOT be used in absence of RA with M and/or O=1?
> 
> But what's the alternative? Always run DHCPv6 even if there are no router
> advertisements or router advertisements with O=0, M=0?

That would seem to be the logical outcome, yes.

> Like I said before, that would pollute the network with many multicasts
> which can seriously degrade wifi performance.

Regardless of it's potential downsides, the issue at hand was the RFC
compliance of such a setup.  Owen DeLong contended that:

On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 09:12:26PM -0700, Owen DeLong wrote:
> As it currently stands, an RFC-compliant host will not attempt to solicit
> a DHCP response unless it receives an RA with the M inclusive-or O bits
> set.

Daniel was merely requesting a reference for that assertion.  If you have
one, I'm sure Daniel (and Owen) would appreciate it.

- Matt




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