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One Less Reason to Adopt IPv6?
alphadogg writes "For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security, and easier network administration through automatic device configuration. Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits — autoconfiguration — may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6."
IPv6 Autoconfiguration is close but no cigar in a couple of signignificant ways:
/64 addresses for hosts, the address size gain, while large, isn't anywhere near the original promise, and encoding the MAC address into a globally-visable IP address does release information about hosts which was formerly private (NIC vendor, for one, as well as the more theoretical complaint about the layering violation).
1) DNS server information wasn't baked in from the beginning (there are now some drafts to fix this, but I haven't yet seen the working code) - all this time, and we managed to recreate BootP...
2) Because autoconfiguration uses
3) Just try it with VMWare or other virtualization software. Ouch. There's a whole lot of borked there.
4) Obviously you wouldn't want to use it for a true server, becuase who wants their server IP to change when a NIC burns out?
All that said, in a dual-stack environment it works reasonably well: but it doesn't honestly look like anyone gave much thought to a time when IPv4 wouldn't be present on the LAN or on the hosts...
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DHCP does a whole lot more than that.
The reality of the situation is that stateless autoconfig in IPv6 is one way to get basic networking connectivity setup, DHCP is another. Depending on your situation, the phase of the moon, and any of a number of philosophical viewpoints held by the network admin, stateless autoconfig might or might not get used. *shrug* Even with stateless autoconfig, DHCPv6 might also get used to configure other information that is not handled by stateless autoconfig (DNS servers, NTP servers, any of a huge list of other things).
The important point to remember, though is *2 YEARS*. That's how long we have until the IPv4 address space is fully allocated at the top level. It may take a little longer (months?) before people start really feeling any pain from that at the end-user level. But its the critically important point for people to realize. Can you be ready for IPv6 in 2 years? You need to be. If its gonna take you 2 years to get IPv6 functioning in your network, then you need to start *NOW*.
Autoconfig is a nice default for something that "just works" without much need for an admin to plan out the network, and DHCP is great for tighter control where needed. What's wrong with having both options available?
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
IPv6 isn't that good because DHCP has been updated to support IPv6?
O.O *blink blink* O.O
I run DHCP on my home network to setup: DNS, WINS, Gateway, IP Address, NTP (Time), and other services. I also use it to record MAC addresses for security reasons, and to easily grab them so that I can configure static IPs and DNS names for specific systems without having to ask people for their specific MAC (unless they're coming in wireless...then they need to to get access anyway...).
Point is, it gives me an easy way to manage my network. And honestly, I was looking forward to playing around with IPv6 in the same manner on my home network (because I could, and wanted to experiment), but some things just aren't ready for it yet, and the lack of a DHCPv6 server (at the time) to manage the auto-configuring was an issue too.
Additionally, I have played with IPv6 with its auto-config, which at least under Windows 2003 is a joke as it is a half-baked implementation that is just plain broke. Half the time it works, and half the time it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it is seriously borked, and breaks everything else too. (And I was only running a set of 6 systems (4 servers, and 2 clients) in my test network.) It took a lot of time to get systems reconnected when things failed out due to IPv6 addressing not working. Haven't tried it much under Linux yet...but I would still have Windows clients to support, and VPN and other software that would need supported. (Software I don't control the version or support on...work does.)
Any how...DHCPv6 would have made supporting that test network a lot easier, and actually would have kept it functional. I cannot imagine what kind of problems admins will have trying to deploy IPv6 with auto-config on a larger network. (Imagine, your computer gets a new IPv6 address just because you rebooted...not make that your server and you could really screw up your network quickly.)
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
> Why are we waiting until it's a crisis to deal with it?
:-)
Because that's just human nature -- we're all procrastinators -- some of us admit it -- others are putting that admission off.
History is replete with situations where timely action would have saved piles of money and/or lives -- have we ever acted at the right time? No -- we wait until something like http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/dday.htm is necessary.
So I think we can all safely predict that it will be a crisis before we do anything about it.
And remember -- never put off until tomorrow that which can be put off until the day after.
Ian Ameline
Why are we waiting until it's a crisis to deal with it?
Because until it's a crisis, you can't get the money to upgrade. If current addressing is going to work for another week, then it costs nothing to stick with it. Call me when the crisis is imminent.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
Because people learned the WRONG lesson from y2k.
Nothing happened.
So the accepted wisdom became that the whole thing was just an alarmist fiasco that chewed up a bunch of money unnecessarily. They don't realize that y2k was no problem precisely because of all the noise. A LOT of people did a lot of planning and a lot of work, and that all paid off in how few problems there really were.
But the common man, and unfortunately the common leaders don't understand that. So now y2k was a so-called crisis, wasn't a problem, and we can approach our next so-called crisis without the extensive preparation we "wasted" on y2k. Oh boy!
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Son, they've been saying that for 15+ years.
Yes, there is a limit. But once IPV4 address space at the "top level" becomes scarce, it will be handled according to the rules of any scarce commodity - it'll become more expensive. That will encourage efficiency, free space from wasteful users, etc. Then we'll get close again, lather rinse repeat, etc. We will eventually hit the point of "full" but it's not like in September 2010 suddenly there will be no more routable IPs for the next system that needs one.
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