IPv6 woes - RFC

Tue Sep 14 13:47:31 UTC 2021

Nick Hilliard wrote:

> E.g. using mcast for address resolution because large flat
> l2 networks were the order of the day,

It was and still is trivially obvious that automatic
address resolution over large flat l2 does not scale.

Configuring virtual all-host-mcast in large flat l2
for automatic address resolution needs static address
resolution information, which is not automatic.

> that client 
> self-selected addresses should be the only game in town for 
> auto-addressing

Using lengthy MAC addresses for that purpose was tried
in XNS. But as it was so annoying, it was totally abandoned
at the time IPv4 was widely developed.

Though AppleTalk was still using a single byte for that
purpose in SOHO, DHCP was already performing better
everywhere including SOHO.

> that extension headers were a great idea,

IPv4 optional header was totally operationally denied a lot
before that.

							Masataka Ohta