[147687] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPv6 RA vs DHCPv6 - The chosen one?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Tue Dec 20 02:34:54 2011
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAE+sBxgt04Myw-MY_pck6=fS52uY25LA+vttsy0iXLrvPJBrHQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:31:15 -0800
To: Ravi Duggal <raviduggal2906@gmail.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Different operators will have different preferences in different =
environments.
Ideally, the IETF should provide complete solutions based on DHCPv6 and
on RA and let the operators decide what they want to use in their =
environments.
Owen
On Dec 19, 2011, at 10:27 PM, Ravi Duggal wrote:
> Hi,
>=20
> IPv6 devices (routers and hosts) can obtain configuration information
> about default routers, on-link prefixes and addresses from Router
> Advertisements as defined in Neighbor Discovery. I have been told
> that in some deployments, there is a strong desire not to use Router
> Advertisements at all and to perform all configuration via DHCPv6.
> There are thus similar IETF standards to get everything that you can
> get from RAs, by using DHCPv6 instead.
>=20
> As a result of this we see new proposals in IETF that try to do
> similar things by either extending RA mechanisms or by introducing new
> options in DHCPv6.
>=20
> We thus have draft-droms-dhc-dhcpv6-default-router-00 that extends
> DHCPv6 to do what RA does. And now, we have
> draft-bcd-6man-ntp-server-ra-opt-00.txt that extends RA to advertise
> the NTP information that is currently done via DHCPv6.
>=20
> My question is, that which then is the more preferred option for the
> operators? Do they prefer extending RA so that the new information
> loaded on top of the RA messages gets known in the single shot when
> routers do neighbor discovery. Or do they prefer all the extra
> information to be learnt via DHCPv6? What are the pros and cons in
> each approach and when would people favor one over the other?
>=20
> I can see some advantages with the loading information to RA since
> then one is not dependent on the DHCPv6 server. However, the latter
> provides its own benefits.
>=20
> Regards,
> Ravi D.
