One Less Reason to Adopt IPv6?

alphadogg writes "For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security, and easier network administration through automatic device configuration. Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits — autoconfiguration — may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6."

But...

[gzerphey]

from the adopt-a-puppy-instead dept

But puppies don't have a "gargantuan address space" or end-to-end security. Trust me, puppies leak all the time.

Stop making excuses!

[vertinox]

Look, if we don't switch to IPv6 one of these days, then in 100 years from now an angry IT network sys admin is going to go insane with the mess we left him and invent a time machine and come back to blow us all up.

It is going to have to happen and the longer we put it off the more expensive it is going to get over time to replace all the equipment. Yes, NAT works but its like trying to keep an old system road infrastructure in place that will be more costly to maintain at a certain point than to replace.

Re:How do you type in the A6 record?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, how, after autoconfiguration, do I get my machine's name "arthur" registered as belonging to this new, autoconfigured IPv6 address?

Fairies.

Or are you really advocating putting a bunch of Domain Fairies out of a job by using some automated DHCP thing?

Re: But...

[Bogtha]

Not to mention the fact that sniffing is a constant problem.

Why are we waiting?

[Anomalyst]

Because M$ does not currently support DHCP static lease address assignment in their IPv6 implementation. Many large enterprises like to have their primary servers at a certain known address, e.g. "10.1.2.3" for proxy "10.1.2.5" fopr file server, etc. Sorry no can do in a windoze IPv6 environment. MS isn't the only culprit. Don't get me started on the debacle they called "site-local". Every place says its deprecated but precious few will inform you what to use as a replacement and best practice of that use.
Much as I would like to use it, I am afraid that until a DHCP IPv6 environment does everything (correctly) a DHCPv4 environment does on both the client and server side, it wont make much headway outside trivial or lab environments.

Re:Stop making excuses!

[NewWorldDan]

Your argument completely ignores the COBOL paradox. If time travel were possible, some angry programmer from the future would have already come back to prevent COBOL from ever being created.

And NAT works very well as the poor man's firewall. Broadband routers have prevented more worm/virus outbreaks than any patch ever will.

Re:Whatever Works

[JoelKatz]

"Why are we waiting until it's a crisis to deal with it?"

Ironically, the longer you wait to deal with it, the cheaper it may be!

There are some obvious reasons why waiting longer makes it cost more, but there are quite a few subtle reasons why it's cheaper to wait. For example:

1) If your current hardware is not IPv6 capable and you buy new IPv6-capable hardware now, it may reach end-of-life before you need the IPv6 capability.

2) IPv6 routes take more memory than IPv4 routes. The longer you wait, the cheaper it will be to add this memory. (Note that we're not just talking cheap main memory, we're talking expensive CAM and custom chip memory.)

3) Research and development are constantly progressing. The longer you wait, the better researched the solution you ultimately deploy may be. (To a limit, of course. You also lose the chance to gain experience.)

On balance, I think we're progressing at a sensible pace, perhaps a bit slower than perfect. People are continuing to do test deployments to see how IPv6 will work and make sure they'll be able to implement it for real when the demand comes. But they're not wasting money replacing working hardware or increasing network instability on the real, live Internet we all depend on for our daily (hourly? half-hourly?) /. fix.

Re:Whatever Works

[Digero]

I have an insightful response to this. I'll type it up tomorrow.