Re: [v6ops] DHCPv6/SLAAC Make Hosts Confusing-//RE: new draft: draft-liu-bonica-v6ops-dhcpv6-slaac-problem

[Ted Lemon <[e-mail]>]

On Oct 24, 2013, at 8:55 AM, Victor Kuarsingh <[e-mail]> wrote:
> From: Lorenzo Colitti <[e-mail]>
>> 2. Attempt to say that RAs and DHCPv6 are simply containers and propose a unified option format so we can have the >>same options in both of them. I know this was already proposed once and was shot down, but I wasn't around, so I >>don't know why. (CCing a few people who might know).
> 
> [VK] This seems like an intriguing idea. Would this mean that every option must go into each container, or that there will be a common set of options which go into both, and perhaps exceptions go into one or the other? (On that latter part, I guess that line of thinking gets us back to where we are).

I think the main reason we didn't do this is that it seems like a mistake to have two mechanisms for delivering the same information.   If we really think RA is the right way to do all host configuration, why not just add a stateful mode?   If we really think DHCP is the right way to do all host configuration, why not just add support for configuring routes?   Stateful RA could actually be piggybacked onto DHCP, so that the router just creates a DHCP message and forwards it upstream, or answers it locally, depending on the circumstances.

Doing what's proposed here means that code on clients needs to be four times more complicated than it would be otherwise.   Putting DNS server options in RAs was a bad idea.   Continuing down that path is a worse idea, particularly since this proposal would mean there'd be two ways of representing DNS server information in RAs.

If we really got this wrong, we should fix it, not make it worse.

Anyway, that's the rhetorical position I'm going to stake out for now.   I'm curious to see if anybody can come up with a reason to disagree that doesn't simplify to either "I hate RA" or "I hate DHCP."