nanog mailing list archives

Re: Mac OS X 10.7, still no DHCPv6


From: Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 18:01:44 -0800


On Feb 27, 2011, at 3:41 PM, Tore Anderson wrote:

* Owen DeLong

On Feb 27, 2011, at 4:21 AM, Randy Bush wrote:

NOC: are you running a macintosh?
User: yes, how did you guess?
NOC: because it is broken.  get vista.

While I'm as big a fan of IPv6 as anybody, I think in a comparison of
relative brokenness, Mac comes out quite favorably compared to
Vista in spite of their DHCPv6 deficiencies.

Absolutely not. Mac OS X does not do proper source address selection
according to RFC 3484. That makes it do things like preferring the use
of link-local IPv6 addresses when connecting to global dual-stacked
destinations, which of course won't work - as a result a 75 second long
timeout is incurred for every single outgoing TCP connection. Versions
earlier than 10.6.5, still in use by a considerable amount of users,
will also prefer the use of 6to4 to IPv4, again something which is
causing lots of brokenness. (Windows ICS is responsible for causing lots
of OS X hosts to have 6to4 addresses in the first place, though.)

OS X also has a bug that will make it interpret a router lifetime of 0
in a RA as infinite, causing more troubles when found behind IPv6 CE
routers using ULAs in compliance with I-D.ietf-v6ops-ipv6-cpe-router,
one example of which is the AVM FritzBox as far as I understand.

You're talking about IPv6-specific brokenness. I'm talking about overall
OS brokenness.

On IPv6, yes, Micr0$0ft actually (finally) got something mostly right.

On just about everything else... Windows... Nah, can't say I miss it at all.

Owen



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