turning on comcast v6

Mon Dec 30 19:20:25 UTC 2013

On Dec 30, 2013, at 12:58 PM, Lee Howard <Lee at asgard.org> wrote:

>> 
>> 
>> 'Rewrite all of your tools and change your long standing business
>> practices¹ 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 doesn¹t fit into the ³IPv6 way,² but bean counters don¹t care
>> much for that when you have to ask for developer time to rewrite
>> everything.
> 
> 
> Well, the tools have to be rewritten to support IPv6 fields, sockets, and
> structures anyway.  However, there's a difference between, "Make sure you
> call IP family agnostic libraries and increase field sizes, then let it
> run" and "Rebuild your network security."  DHCP+RA just works in most
> networks; this is a use case where it could be made to work, but only by
> changing the network.

Updating tools to add a box for IPv6 fields and tweaking the backend to generate a config file for DHCPv6 which is very similar to DHCP(for v4) is a lot different/easier than having to rewrite and/or split your backend to generate output in a completely different format. However, I'm not as familiar with RADVD as I am with isc-dhcpd so that might be a bad argument.

And you don't have to support IPv6 from top to bottom to roll out IPv6 to users. So rewriting for socket support isn't necessary day one. You can route IPv6 for users so they can reach the IPv6 world quickly, then add local services as time/money allows. The biggest driver for IPv6 will be external resources available only via IPv6, not local. (Of course this is from the point of view where your business' primary service isn't outward facing resources.)

I'm sure DHCP+RA works for most, but there are IPv4 shops who swear by fully dynamic DHCP, some who do DHCP-Reservations, and some who go static only. Just like some shops are EIGRP, some OSPF, and some ISIS. IMO IPv6 needs to be flexible enough to handle the fact that not everyone builds identical architectures nor do they have the exact same needs. Being able to use DHCPv6+RA, RA only, or DHCPv6 only should all be viable options. Forcing everyone down the same path will just lead to stupid proprietary solutions to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place.

/Ryan
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