Re: [69ATTENDEES] DHCP

[Shane Kerr <shane@time-travellers.org>]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 01:25:46PM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote:
> 
> >(This is a bit silly, because everything other than "IPv6 has more
> >addresses" has been added to IPv4 - of course!)
> 
> Why is this silly? And _stateless_ autoconfiguration with stable
> addresses can't be added to IPv4 because the address space isn't
> large enough.

Yet Microsoft and Apple both do IPv4 autoconfiguration. Not perfect,
but it works.

I was mostly referring to the laundry-list of "features" from IPv6
that also exist in IPv4: multiple addresses per interface, IPSEC,
QoS, and so on.

> >Because of this, they resisted DHCPv6, and they continue to oppose
> >DHCPv6.
> 
> Hm, how exactly did the IPv6 designers in ~ 1995 resist DHCPv6 that
> wasn't published until 2003?

The first DHCPv6 draft was published in February 1995, and the
resistance kept it from being published for 8 years. There were *28*
drafts before it was finally moved to RFC status!

http://www3.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-dhc-dhcpv6-00

> >I suppose I am "in the DHCP camp", but my take on it is not to
> >oppose network designs without DHCP, but rather that we should not
> >attempt to duplicate the functionality of DHCP in other protocols.
> 
> So we're free to NOT use DHCP as long as we forego the functionality
> that DHCP provides? I'm sorry, that's not a reasonable position.

Hey, it's your network, do what you want. If you want to configure
manually, go ahead. If you want to use a home-grown protocol, go
ahead. But if you want an IETF-approved way to do it, then you must
play nice with the IETF.

The opposition to duplicating DHCP functionality in other mechanisms
is the same as if you proposed an alternative to *any* existing
protocol. You should explain why the benefits your new protocol brings
cannot simply be added to the existing technology.

--
Shane