Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6

Lorenzo Colitti lorenzo at colitti.com
Wed Jun 10 12:21:38 UTC 2015


On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 8:35 PM, Ray Soucy <rps at maine.edu> wrote:

> In practice, your device will just not be supported.
>
> As you pointed out, there isn't anything that forces adoption of IPv6
> right now.
>

It's certainly a possibility for both sides in this debate to say "my way
or the highway", and wait and see what happens when operators start
removing support for IPv4.


> I'm perfectly find NATing Android, and don't see us giving up the
> operational benefits to DHCPv6 anytime soon.
>

Oh, I definitely see that DHCPv6 is easier for network operators.

But even if you're dead set on using DHCPv6, what I don't see is why don't
you support DHCPv6 PD instead of IA_NA? It's the same amount of state. Same
accountability. Same transaction model. But unlike NA, the device gets as
many addresses as it needs. Nothing breaks, and you get future flexibility.
Mobile devices don't have to implement NAT, and application developers
don't have to work around it. You size your IPv6 pools based on the size of
your IPv4 pools, and don't run out of addresses. Technically, that sort of
arrangement is superior to IA_NA in basically every way. So... why use
IA_NA?

Even if the answers are "that's what we do in IPv4, and we want to do it
the same way", or "we're worried that this is strange and will tickle
vendor bugs", "it's not supported by the IPAM we use today", or "this is
what we've decided, our network our rules", I would hope that we as an
industry can think a little longer term than that.

Also, in terms of hotspot functionality being the major driver
>

Don't think about yesterday, think about tomorrow. Tethering and 464xlat
are just two examples of what can be done when you have the ability to use
more than one IPv6 address and cannot be done without that. We know these
will break today; tomorrow, we can use multiple addresses to do things we
haven't thought of yet.



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