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."

Comments

Re:DHCP in an IPV6 world

[igjeff]

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*.

Why Not Both

[maz2331]

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?

Re:DHCP in an IPV6 world

[afabbro]

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.

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.