On 2010-09-22 03:00, Randy Bush wrote:
>>> Well, I think what would help is to be able to run a DHCPv6 only
>>> environment without RA/RS, it would also help if one didn't need NS
>>> either. The whole L2 environment would need a lot less code, it
>>> basically would only need to be able to filter the above mechanisms, not
>>> inspect them.
>> I think the technical issue there is that ND and RA were designed as a
>> package, and you certainly can't run without ND.
>>
>> [Historical note: the ND/RA design was done at a time when all we
>> had deployed was ARP, because DHCP was not yet mature, and most of us
>> were still configuring IPv4 hosts manually. ND/RA seemed like an
>> enormous leap forward.]
>
> token ring seemed like a good idea too. but ethernet won. here in the
> operational net, dhcp dominates. maybe, 15 years later, it's time for
> another leap forward.
But as Rémi said:
> It seems to be too late anyway:
> - A LAN without ND/RA wouldn't support currently existing hosts
> - A host without ND/RA wouldn't work on currently existing LANs
>
> Not preserving backward compatibility would IMHO be a very bad idea.
I'm not against new-and-better, and I have some spare Token Ring PCMCIA
cards if you need them, but we already have an IPv6 legacy. Mikael
is arguing for a mode in which there is no ND/RA traffic whatever,
so that layer-violation code in layer 2 doesn't have to watch out
for it. That isn't realistic, IMHO, since there are millions of
devices out there that believe ND/RA is the right thing to do when
IPv6 is enabled. And we still need isolated IPv6 networks to self-configure,
so ND/RA is never going to go away, so there will always be devices
that start it up, even if DHCPv6 is enhanced as Mikael proposes.
Brian
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