Some of the discussion has gone into the history of IPv6 design, what
configuration model was intended by the original designers as the right
one, and so on. I would suggest that while that's interesting, it may be
secondary to what we are discussing here.
Suresh wants to support a particular type of a deployment, and it
doesn't help him if some design is the "right" one or matches with our
*desires* of what hosts and other devices should be doing or
implementing. The primary concern should be that we have something that
works. In particular, we need to worry about what random hosts do in
these networks, as we cannot dictate what devices will exist in people's
homes. And we cannot upgrade or change existing implementations. This
applies both to the problem that started this discussion, i.e., hosts
giving up on sending RSes but also to their support of DHCPv6. As an
example, while DHCPv6 is available on Linux, none of the IPv6 Linux
devices that in my network have come with DHCPv6 on by default. (You can
of course ask me to change my configs, but asking my mother to do the
same may not be feasible.)
Host support is important because that is an area where neither the
IETF, any single vendor, or the DSL operators have any easy way to
change the situation. But it is of course by no means the only
constraint. The operators have their issues as well. Even though they
are in control of their own networks, they probably want to keep their
underlying L2 network architecture as it is, despite introduction of
IPv6 or other new features.
Jari
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