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Comment Re:If only Windows supported IPv6 (Score 1) 250

By "full", I mean that it can do DNS. Windows not supporting RDNSS doesn't mean that you have to set the server manually; you can set it automatically.

Yes, full. Only on limited scenarios (not the most common ones, BTW).

I'm not really a fan of RDNSS; it puts host config into RAs with no clear guidelines as to which config options ought to be in them. (Why do we only put DNS info in there, and not all the other things you can configure?)

These are all the usual network settings. Sure, there's edge cases, but the idea is to cover the basics.

 

But I'm not arguing that MS shouldn't support it, I'm just pointing out that Windows isn't so incapable that it has no way of setting DNS servers automatically.

(As an aside, Windows will also configure a default set of DNS servers if you have no other v6 servers configured, so if you're doing a v6-only network and you really don't want to run stateless DHCPv6 for some reason and the only thing you wanted to set was the DNS servers, you could just add fec0:0:0:ffff::{1,2,3} to your DNS server and Windows would work fine.)

That's a microsoft-only made-up standard. Not only that, but using that address space was deprecated in 2004, so implementeing is actually incompliant.

Comment Re:If only Windows supported IPv6 (Score 1) 250

[...] because RAs are broadcasts sent by routers (plural, potentially) to announce network layout.

So? dns is a common part of modern network infrastructure. It's also possible you want to have devices use a dns according to which router they use (potentially, because the dns server may be on the other side of the router). Again, if they think dns in RA is bad design, it's still a common standard, it's not up to them to say "screw you" to those users.

That doesn't match up with the requirements for host config parameters, where you need a single authoritative source and you need the ability to receive machine IDs from clients so you can give out per-machine config settings.

A requirement that you just made up? A network can function properly with different hosts using different dns servers, there's no requirement to use the same.
Sure, RA doesn't have support for "per-machine config settings", but this is only something corporate environments need (and they can use dhcpv6). That just justifies the usage of dhcpv6 in those scenarios. It doesn't justify discarting RA completely for every user.

(Of course we haven't really stuck with that logic, since people argued that they didn't want to run dhcpv6 just for dns, so dns info was added to RAs. Then other people argued they didn't want to run dhcpv6 just for dns search domains, so that was added too. Where does it stop, I wonder...)

dns search domain are part of the network layout (just higher layer that IP/gateway). It makes perfect sense to include it into a single protocol that advertises network layout.

Again, none of these arguments justify not supporting RA. And saying that windows "fully supports IPv6" is mistaken, it only supports a certain network configuration. Not the most popular one by the way.

Comment Re:If only Windows supported IPv6 (Score 1) 250

You also said they can't transition to v6 because their own OS doesn't support it, which isn't true. It's supported full automatic configuration of v6 network details out of the box since Vista in 2006, which is a lot longer than most Linux distros have been doing it.

"full automatic configuration of v6 network details". The word "full" is quite relative here. It only works on a single specific (and very uncommon) scenario where you have dhcpv6

I believe Debian only started doing that last year, and I'd be unsurprised if there were still major distros that didn't.

We were not discussing Linux nor debian. That's completely out-of-topic and irrelevant.

I wish I could find the discussions they must have had at the time about RAs... I assumed there would be mailing list archives or somesuch but I haven't managed to find anything. I guess the logic was that dns info (or other host config) doesn't belong in RAs

That's they opinion. The standard differs. Both the written standard, and common real life scenarios.

Comment Re:Feature or bug? (Score 1) 89

Nokia would not have been able to ensure that the phones accept only applications approved by the company.

Sounds more like a feature than a bug. Do device "owners" really want phones that "accept only applications approved by the company".

The dive can run any code, the signing key makes it look "officially approved" by Nokia.

Comment Re:Internal and External Simultaneously (Score 1) 104

That's just what I was thinking: if they're firms based overseas, then they can't force them to disclose SSL keys (making the communication secure-er). They shouldn't be able to force them to do anything, legally.

But doesn't facebook have a UK subsidiary, and offices in the UK (and mirrors, since I'm pretty sure they use CDNs)?

Comment Re:If only Windows supported IPv6 (Score 1) 250

Like I said, I doesn't support retrieving DNS over RA; only retrieving IP address/prefix (it's quite silly to support getting an address but not DNS servers, by the way. Why would I want a public IP address and no DNS on a desktop OS?).

RA is the more common (and simple) option for advertising DNS. DHCPv6 requires a second (redundant) service just for DNS - seems a bit of an overkill. Also, I've yet to come across a network that uses stateless DHCPv6.

Comment Re:IP numbers are terrible (Score 1) 250

I really don't get what your post is about. Only very specific situations require you to actually use IP (4 or 6) numbers. We've had DNS for decades and mDNS for a long time as well. You only need to work with dns when initially configuring network devices (eg: routers) or DNS servers themselves. No other scenario should require that you use IP numbers.

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