Re: Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6

[Tore Anderson <tore () fud no>]

* Lorenzo Colitti

> Tethering is just one example that we know about today. Another example is
> 464xlat.

You can't do 464XLAT without the network operator's help anyway (unless
you/Google is planning on hosting a public NAT64 service?). If the
network operator actively wants 464XLAT to be used, by providing
DNS64/NAT64 service, then it seems fairly reasonable to assume that
they're not going to deploy an IPv6/DHCPv6-only network that limits the
number of IA_NA per attached node to 1.

> And that's not counting future applications that can take
> advantage of multiple IP addresses that we haven't thought of yet, and that
> we will have if we get stuck with
> there-are-more-IPv6-addresses-in-this-subnet-than-grains-of-sand-but-you-only-get-one-because-that's-how-we-did-it-in-IPv4
> networks.

Of course. Hard to argue against imaginary things. :-)

On the other hand, there exist applications *today* that do require
DHCPv6. One such example would be MAP, which IMHO is superior to
464XLAT both for the network operator (statlessness ftw) as well as for
the end user (unsolicited inbound packets work, no NAT traversal
required). MAP is provisioned with DHCPv6 (I-D.ietf-softwire-map-dhcp),
so without DHCPv6 support in Android, MAP support in Android is a
non-starter.

Tore