DHCPv6

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6) is a network protocol for configuring Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) hosts with IP addresses, IP prefixes and other configuration data required to operate in an IPv6 network. It is the IPv6 equivalent of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv4.I think that that wide deployment of one-address-per-device IPv6 might actually do more harm than good, and I expect that many operators who are going to require stateful DHCPv6 addressing are going to use it for one-address-per-device IPv6. upporting DHCPv6-only networks will eventually force OS manufacturers to implement IPv6 NAT. This is because there are many features inside a mobile OS that require multiple IP addresses. One example is 464xlat. Another example is tethering. In IPv4 we use NAT for all that, and that's unavoidable due to lack of IPv4 space. That reason does not apply in IPv6 though. With SLAAC or DHCPv6 PD, these functions can use their own IPv6 addresses. With stateful DHCPv6 addressing, we're back to using NAT again. That means application flakiness, battery impact due to NAT keepalives, and so on. It also means that things that don't work behind NAT (e.g., 464xlat, which requires its own IPv6 address) cannot be made to work at all. 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. The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 (DHCPv6) is a network protocol for configuring Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) hosts with IP addresses, IP prefixes and other configuration data required to operate in an IPv6 network. It is the IPv6 equivalent of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv4. IPv6 hosts may automatically generate IP addresses internally using stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC), or they may be assigned configuration data with DHCPv6. IPv6 hosts that use stateless autoconfiguration may require information other than an IP address or route. DHCPv6 can be used to acquire this information, even though it is not being used to configure IP addresses. DHCPv6 is not necessary for configuring hosts with the addresses of Domain Name System (DNS) servers, because they can be configured using Neighbor Discovery Protocol, which is also the mechanism for stateless autoconfiguration. Many IPv6 routers, such as routers for residential networks, must be configured automatically with no operator intervention. Such routers require not only an IPv6 address for use in communicating with upstream routers, but also an IPv6 prefix for use in configuring devices on the downstream side of the router. DHCPv6 prefix delegation provides a mechanism for configuring such routers.