[142028] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The stupidity of trying to "fix" DHCPv6
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Thu Jun 16 16:21:11 2011
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <5A802C48-E4D0-4012-84FC-6FE843BA907E@muada.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 13:18:52 -0700
To: Iljitsch van Beijnum <iljitsch@muada.com>
Cc: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jun 14, 2011, at 10:56 PM, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> On 15 jun 2011, at 7:33, Owen DeLong wrote:
>=20
>> Bottom line, I expect it's easier to get cooperation from OS vendors =
and BIOS vendors to make changes
>> because experience has shown that they are more willing to do so than =
vertical software vendors.
>=20
>> As such, yes, I'd like to see some harmless extensions added to =
DHCPv6 that solve some real world
>> problems.
>=20
> BTW, as long as you're making harmless changes: not putting a hard =
line end just _after_ 80 characters would make your messages easier to =
read.
>=20
OK... Line endings removed per your request.
> As established before, all of this is not harmless and OS vendors (not =
sure what you're talking about with BIOS) aren't all that willing to =
make changes, at least not on short timescales.
>=20
It is harmless. Adding routing information options to DHCPv6 does not in =
any way harm existing implementations.
Adding the ability to simultaneously request DHCP information and RA is =
a tiny amount of additional traffic on
the network (thus also harmless).
When I talk about BIOS, I'm taking into account that some DHCP =
implementations are in the PXE for diskless
booting and installation processes, etc. Admittedly, I'm not sure how =
many BIOS contain IPv6 capability
for this as yet anyway, but, it is an area that must eventually get =
implemented.
> It seems to me that the easiest solution to work around broken =
IPv4-only software isn't messing with the IPv6 protocol stack, but to =
create an IPv4 overlay on top of IPv6 that seems like a big IPv4 =
broadcast domain despite going through IPv6 routers.
>=20
I'm not sure how you propose creating an IPv4 broadcast domain that =
isn't an iPv6 link. I mean the theory
sounds great, but, in practice, it seems rather far-fetched.
> Actually this would also be quite useful in hosting environments where =
it would be easy to give every IPv6 customer their own VLAN but the IPv4 =
subnets are entangled.
Indeed, if it were even remotely possible.
Owen
