Re: turning on comcast v6

[Victor Kuarsingh <victor () jvknet com>]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell () ufp org> wrote:

> On Dec 30, 2013, at 4:37 PM, Victor Kuarsingh <victor () jvknet com> wrote:
>
> > On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Lee Howard <Lee () asgard org> wrote:
> > > > The better question is are you using RIP or ICMP to set gateways in
> your
> > > > network now?
> > >
> > > I disagree that that's a better question.
> > > I'm not using RIP because my hosts don't support it (at least, not
> without
> > > additional configuration), and it would be a very unusual configuration,
> > > adding weight and complexity for no benefit.  RAs are the opposite.
> > > Not even sure how you would use ICMP to set a default gateway.  Maybe
> > > there's a field I'm unaware of.
> >
> > [VK] The RIP comparison is somewhat confusing to me.  I don't see how RIP
> > is comparable in this context (I guess technically you can pass a default
> > route in RIP, but as Lee mentions, the protocol is designed for a
> different
> > purpose and requires configuration).
>
> There was a time, I'm going to roughly guess approximately 1987-1992,
> although
> I may be off by a year or two, that you needed to have lived through for
> this
> to make sense.
>
> You see, in that time the available IGP was, well, RIP.  RIPv1.  Routers,
> at
> least ones you could buy, did not have OSPF, EIGRP, or even in many cases
> EGP/BGP.  They had RIPv1, and perhaps some bleeding edge Cisco's had IGRP.
> So almost every campus network ran RIPv1


[VK]  Leo, I understand the case you mention, but I am not sure if this is
a parallel to what the subject is on this thread.  I would think we are
talking - not about routers and servers here - but end hosts (PCs, tablets,
home gateways, smart phones, media devices etc.) which would be the
beneficiaries of the [DHCPv6] route option information.

I still don't think that RIP's prevalence in 20+ year old network
environments, and it's lack of use today, draws a comparison to the
validity of using RAs.  I get that it [RIP] may have been "default" on may
historic boxes, so had similar effect on providing a default route, but the
protocol's purpose was not intended to do that for all the hosts on a
network (also a world where not all networks were IP as well).

RA on the other had was specifically purposed to be used to provide this
kind of information to all IPv6 stacks.  So I still think we are talking
about very different environments in protocol types, purpose and mixture of
participating hosts/routers etc.

regards,

Victor K