turning on comcast v6

Mon Dec 30 18:04:48 UTC 2013

On Dec 24, 2013, at 8:15 AM, Lee Howard <Lee at asgard.org> wrote:

>> default route information via DHCPv6.  That's what I'm still waiting for.
> 
> Why?
> You say, "The protocol suite doesn't meet my needs; I need default gateway
> in DHCPv6."  So the IETF WG must change for you to deploy IPv6.  Why?
> 
> Lee

There are many places that wish to severely restrict or even block RA. Implementations of Captive Portal/NetReg/Bump in the wire auth/etc like to do redirection based on MAC. Many are doing this with very short DHCP leases that hand out different name servers and/or gateways until you properly auth via $method. You might be able to do this with something like RADVD, but when you have systems that have been doing this for IPv4 for years, there’s little interest (read: budget) in rewriting everything for IPv6.

'Rewrite all of your tools and change your long standing business practices’ is a very large barrier to entry to IPv6. If adding gateway as an optional field will help people get over that barrier, why not add it? Sure it doesn’t fit into the “IPv6 way,” but bean counters don’t care much for that when you have to ask for developer time to rewrite everything. 

Disclaimer: I don’t condone said methods and trickery mentioned above, just pointing out their use.

/Ryan