Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6

Wed Jun 10 06:32:30 UTC 2015

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 12:37 PM, Karl Auer <kauer at biplane.com.au> wrote:

> RFC 3315 says you just chuck in multiple IA_NA (or IA_TA) options. The
> server will respond with multiple addresses.
>
> And if a device makes a second (, third, fourth, ..) request with a
> different DUID, it'll get a second (,third, fourth,...) address oo, I
> guess.

It's certainly possible to make Android request N IPv6 addresses via
DHCPv6, and not accept the offer if it is offered fewer than N addresses.
But that only really makes sense if there's a generally-agreed upon minimum
value of N. I'd be happy to work with people on an Internet draft or other
standard to define a minimum value for N, but I fear that it may not
possible to gain consensus on that.

It's also possible for Android to support DHCPv6 PD. Again I'd be happy to
work with people on a document that says that mobile devices should do
DHCPv6 PD and not DHCP NA, and then implement DHCPv6 PD. But I fear similar
arguments will be had there.

Asking for more addresses when the user tries to enable features such as
tethering, waiting for the network to reply, and disabling the features if
the network does not provide the necessary addresses does not seem like it
would provide a good user experience.