DHCPv6 for OS/X, was Re: So why is "IPv4 with longer addresses" a problem anyway?

[Nick Hilliard]

On 01/06/2010 03:34, Shane Kerr wrote:
> Are there plans for this that you know of?

No, not aware of anything in particular; but it just looks to me that the
world is going to move to dhcpv6 and will largely ignore RA, where
possible.  The reason for this is that Windows has pretty decent support
for dhcpv6 these days, and having worked in corporate environments, I just
cannot see any motivation to want to support multiple host configuration
protocols, particularly when one of them (RA) doesn't give the level of
control over addressing that you're used to.

> My understanding was that the Networking Powers that Be in Apple did not
> approve of DHCPv6 for philosophical differences.

There's been very little dhcpv6 client software available until recently,
but Apple will probably just ship dhcpd-4.2(+) with some shim layer.  It's
not like os/x isn't a melange of third party code already.

> Since autoconf is Good Enough for random laptops (or other iThingies)
> running in dual-stack mode, I don't see much motivation for Apple to
> change and support DHCPv6.

It's only a matter of time before they are forced to, and their barrier to
doing so is very low indeed.

Nick