Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6

Wed Jun 10 15:26:45 UTC 2015

Ray,

please do not construe my words on this thread as being Google's position
on anything. These messages were sent from my personal email address, and I
do not speak for my employer.

Regards,
Lorenzo

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Ray Soucy <rps at maine.edu> wrote:

> Respectfully disagree on all points.
>
> The statement that "Android would still not implement DHCPv6 NA, but it
> would implement DHCPv6 PD." is troubling because you're not even willing to
> entertain the idea for reasons that are rooted in idealism rather
> than pragmatism.
>
> Very disappointing to see that this is the position of Google.
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Lorenzo Colitti <lorenzo at colitti.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Ray Soucy <rps at maine.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Actually we do support DHCPv6-PD, but Android doesn't even support
>>> DHCPv6 let alone PD, so that's the discussion here, isn't it?
>>>
>>
>> It is possible to implement DHCPv6 without implementing stateful address
>> assignment.
>>
>> If there were consensus that delegating a prefix of sufficient size via
>> DHCPv6 PD of a sufficient size is an acceptable substitute for stateful
>> IPv6 addressing in the environments that currently insist on stateful
>> DHCPv6 addressing, then it would make sense to implement it. In that
>> scenario, Android would still not implement DHCPv6 NA, but it would
>> implement DHCPv6 PD.
>>
>> What needs to be gauged about that course of action is how much consensus
>> would be achieved, whether network operators would actually use it (IPv6
>> has a long and distinguished history of people claiming "I can't support
>> IPv6 until I get feature X", feature X appearing, and people changing their
>> claim to "I can't support IPv6 until I get feature Y"), and how much of
>> this discussion would be put to bed.
>>
>> That course of action would seem most feasible if it were accompanied by
>> an IETF document that explained the deployment model and clarified what
>> "sufficient size" is.
>>
>>
>>> Universities see a constant stream of DMCA violation notices that need
>>> to be dealt with and not being able to associate a specific IPv6 address to
>>> a specific user is a big enough liability that the only option is to not
>>> use IPv6.
>>>
>>
>> It's not the *only* option. There are large networks - O(100k) IPv6 nodes
>> - that do ND monitoring for accountability, and it does work for them. Many
>> devices support this via syslog, even. As you can imagine, my Android
>> device gets IPv6 at work, even though it doesn't support DHCPv6. Other
>> universities, too. It's obviously  not your chosen or preferred mechanism,
>> but it does work.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Ray Patrick Soucy
> Network Engineer
> University of Maine System
>
> T: 207-561-3526
> F: 207-561-3531
>
> MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network
> www.maineren.net
>