IPv6 RA vs DHCPv6 - The chosen one?

Michael Sinatra michael at rancid.berkeley.edu
Wed Dec 21 23:04:58 UTC 2011


On 12/21/11 12:40, Ray Soucy wrote:
> I'm afraid you're about 10 years too late for this opinion to make
> much difference. ;-)
>
> We have been running IPv6 in production for several years (2008) as
> well (answering this email over IPv6 now, actually) yet I have
> completely different conclusions about the role of RA and DHCPv6.
> Weird.

And that's a very good reason not to deprecate SLAAC.  Tomas may prefer 
DHCPv6, and he may provide reasons others may prefer DHCPv6.  But he 
hasn't provided justification for deprecating SLAAC.

Many of us have been working with IPv6 for years and have found SLAAC to 
be quite useful.  The biggest benefit it provides, which Tomas did not 
acknowledge, is the ability to autoconfigure hosts without running a 
central server.  That said, I have also found DHCPv6 to be quite useful.

I also agree with Owen: Provide two complete solutions, and let 
operators choose based on their needs.  That implies fixing DHCPv6 so I 
don't have to go in and disable the autonomous flag on my routers and 
run RAs just to get a default route.  But it also implies not 
deprecating either SLAAC or DHCPv6.

michael




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