Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6

Wed Jun 10 21:43:00 UTC 2015

> From: Lorenzo Colitti
> Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 5:22 AM
> 
> It's certainly a possibility for both sides in this debate to say "my way
> or the highway", and wait and see what happens when operators start
> removing support for IPv4.

You are rather confused.

Only one side of this debate is saying "my way or the highway" – yours.

On my side, I am saying that it is my network, and it is not only my right but my responsibility to define policies as to how it should be used. That could be by blocking port 25 outbound to prevent spam abuse, or by forbidding unauthenticated wireless access points, or by requiring WPA2-enterprise authentication to connect, or any other technical configuration determined to be needed or desired by our policy. Can anyone reasonably say that a provider of a network is not allowed to determine the policies by which that network must be used 8-/?

On the other hand, *you* are providing infrastructure. You are refusing to implement agreed-upon Internet standards that are already widely supported. You are trying to determine what policy we should use on our network. It is completely different. I'm sorry you cannot see that.

> But even if you're dead set on using DHCPv6, what I don't see is why don't
> you support DHCPv6 PD instead of IA_NA?

Perhaps we will support it in addition to. Or perhaps we will not support it at all as that use pattern might not be desirable on our network. However, I am quite certain all of the equipment we purchase and recommend to purchase will support both standards, as well as SLACC and all other standards that have been defined as a base part of IPv6 support. As providers of infrastructure should. And then we will choose which of them to deploy. As managers of networks should.

> more than one IPv6 address and cannot be done without that. We know these
> will break today; tomorrow, we can use multiple addresses to do things we
> haven't thought of yet.

Who knows, maybe IPv12 will solve all of these issues? Maybe we shouldn't bother trying to deploy IPv6 while we're waiting for somebody to design and implement IPv12.