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