nanog mailing list archives

Re: Android (lack of) support for DHCPv6


From: Jeff McAdams <jeffm () iglou com>
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2015 10:36:22 -0500

Then you need to be far more careful about what you say. When you said "Android would still not support..." you, very 
clearly, made a statement of product direction for a Google product. There is no other rational way to interpret your 
statement than to be a statement of Google's position.

-- 
Jeff

On Jun 10, 2015 10:26 AM, Lorenzo Colitti <lorenzo () colitti com> wrote:

Ray, 

please do not construe my words on this thread as being Google's position 
on anything. These messages were sent from my personal email address, and I 
do not speak for my employer. 

Regards, 
Lorenzo 

On Thu, Jun 11, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Ray Soucy <rps () maine edu> wrote: 

Respectfully disagree on all points. 

The statement that "Android would still not implement DHCPv6 NA, but it 
would implement DHCPv6 PD." is troubling because you're not even willing to 
entertain the idea for reasons that are rooted in idealism rather 
than pragmatism. 

Very disappointing to see that this is the position of Google. 


On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:58 AM, Lorenzo Colitti <lorenzo () colitti com> 
wrote: 

On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Ray Soucy <rps () maine edu> wrote: 

Actually we do support DHCPv6-PD, but Android doesn't even support 
DHCPv6 let alone PD, so that's the discussion here, isn't it? 


It is possible to implement DHCPv6 without implementing stateful address 
assignment. 

If there were consensus that delegating a prefix of sufficient size via 
DHCPv6 PD of a sufficient size is an acceptable substitute for stateful 
IPv6 addressing in the environments that currently insist on stateful 
DHCPv6 addressing, then it would make sense to implement it. In that 
scenario, Android would still not implement DHCPv6 NA, but it would 
implement DHCPv6 PD. 

What needs to be gauged about that course of action is how much consensus 
would be achieved, whether network operators would actually use it (IPv6 
has a long and distinguished history of people claiming "I can't support 
IPv6 until I get feature X", feature X appearing, and people changing their 
claim to "I can't support IPv6 until I get feature Y"), and how much of 
this discussion would be put to bed. 

That course of action would seem most feasible if it were accompanied by 
an IETF document that explained the deployment model and clarified what 
"sufficient size" is. 


Universities see a constant stream of DMCA violation notices that need 
to be dealt with and not being able to associate a specific IPv6 address to 
a specific user is a big enough liability that the only option is to not 
use IPv6. 


It's not the *only* option. There are large networks - O(100k) IPv6 nodes 
- that do ND monitoring for accountability, and it does work for them. Many 
devices support this via syslog, even. As you can imagine, my Android 
device gets IPv6 at work, even though it doesn't support DHCPv6. Other 
universities, too. It's obviously  not your chosen or preferred mechanism, 
but it does work. 




-- 
Ray Patrick Soucy 
Network Engineer 
University of Maine System 

T: 207-561-3526 
F: 207-561-3531 

MaineREN, Maine's Research and Education Network 
www.maineren.net 


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