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As you may have gathered from my posts yesterday, I'm working on |
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adding IPv6 to an embedded device (actually a family of serial device |
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servers). |
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I've got the device working fine with link-local addressing, but I'm |
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not sure what the next phase should be. |
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While some of our customers are asking for IPv6 support, I'm pretty |
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sure almost none of those asking are actually using IPv6 nor do they |
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have any plans to do so in the near future. They're either trying to |
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satisfy a feature checklist handed down from on high (where somebody |
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read an airline magazine article about IPv6), or they think that |
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maybe, someday, somehow, IPv6 might be useful (but they have no idea |
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when or how). |
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It is unheard of for these devices to have a routable address, and |
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they're often on small networks that have no connectivity to the |
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outside world at all. Very occasionally they will be accessed via a |
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corporate WAN that involves routing betwen multple subnets. But, they |
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are pretty much never accessed from "The Internet" nor do they access |
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The Internet. |
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The existing devices are used probably half the time with Ethernet MAC |
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addressing only (no IP). When they're used with IPv4 it's 99% static |
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addressing with the other 1% using DHCP. |
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It's also probably relevent that the devices doesn't use a DNS server. |
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Judging by the lack of support in many apps, I'm assuming people |
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aren't going to be using IPv6 link-local addressing (though it |
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corresponds very nicely to our currently common use-case involving MAC |
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addressing). |
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What I'm wondering about is what are the most likely use cases for |
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IPv6 address configuration? |
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1) Almost all our customers who are using IPv4 use static addressing. |
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Do people configure static IPv6 addresses in devices? |
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2) Is IPv6 router announcement sufficient for some common use cases? |
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3) Is DHPCv6 commonly used? |
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4) The device doesn't use DNS and doesn't have a hostname, so there's |
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nothing to do regarding mDNS, right? |
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I think I have to implment someting besides link-local addressing, and |
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I'm wondering what... |
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|
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-- |
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Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I don't understand |
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at the HUMOUR of the THREE |
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gmail.com STOOGES!! |
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