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

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 5/31/2010 7:34 PM, Shane Kerr wrote:
> Nick,
>
> On Mon, 2010-05-31 at 16:38 +0100, Nick Hilliard wrote:
>> At least Windows vista/7, Linux and FreeBSD all support dhcpv6.  I look
>> forward to seeing os/x support some time soon.
>
> Are there plans for this that you know of?
>
> My understanding was that the Networking Powers that Be in Apple did not
> approve of DHCPv6 for philosophical differences.
>
> 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.
>
> Maybe some enterprising Apple fan will wrap a DHCPv6 client with the Mac
> magical way to install things cleanly and provide a nice work-around for
> Apple users. It's not as good as official Apple support, but that would
> be useful for some administrators...
>

The WIDE/KAME dhcp sources are known to compile on 10.5 (just type
configure and make)  Assuming the DHCPv6 client in this works that
would let you get the IP info under OSX, the problem is sticking it
into the Mac.  There is someone who has done some work on this:

http://tsennyipa.livejournal.com/3347.html

My guess is a few hours of time from an experienced MacOSX programmer
would get tsennyipa's code working.  It sounds like he's almost there.
I personally wouldn't want to use his protocol engine, since it's
not open source, I'd try using the WIDE client.

A report from IETF-71:

"during the Q&A session at the plenary (after the IPv6 only event), 
Stuart Cheshire of Apple was venting at the mike about why they should 
have to support yet another protocol for address assignment and other 
configuration info. Someone mentioned RFC 5006 to him, and he said yes, 
that's most likely what they would support ..


Ted