Autoconfiguration
The autoconfiguration capability of IPv6 saves network administrators a lot of work. It has been designed to ensure that manually configuring hosts before connecting them to the network is not required. Even larger sites with multiple networks and routers should not need a DHCP server to configure hosts. The autoconfiguration features of IPv6 will be a key feature of the protocol when all sorts of devices, such as TVs, refrigerators, DVD players, and mobile phones, use IP addresses. You don’t want to depend on a DHCP server to use your home devices.
IPv6 knows both stateless and stateful autoconfiguration. Stateful autoconfiguration is what we call DHCP in the IPv4 world; it is discussed in Chapter 9. What’s really new with IPv6 is that hosts can autoconfigure their IPv6 address without any manual configuration of the host. Some configuration might be done on the routers, but no DHCP servers are required for this configuration mechanism. To generate their IP address, hosts use a combination of local information, such as their MAC address, and information received from routers. Routers can advertise multiple prefixes, and hosts determine prefix information from these advertisements. This allows for simple renumbering of a site: only the prefix information on the router has to be changed. For instance, if you change your ISP and the new ISP assigns a new IPv6 prefix, you can configure your routers to advertise this new prefix, keeping the SLA that you used ...
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