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Comment by morshu9001

4 days ago

I wasn't under the impression that SOHO routers normally have DHCPv6 enabled by default. At least checked mine now and it doesn't.

3 comments

morshu9001

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simoncion  4 days ago

> I wasn't under the impression that SOHO routers normally have DHCPv6 enabled by default.

The fellow I replied to indicated that running a local DNS server on one's LAN "sounds crazy".

My commentary was intended to indicate that it's very common in SOHO networks to already be running a DNS server that automatically adds hostname->address mappings of DHCP clients on that network. It also mentioned that DHCPv6 support is supported by the combined DHCP+DNS daemon used by many (most?) SOHO routers.

My commentary was not intended to indicate that DHCPv6 support is on by default on many or most SOHO routers, only that it's likely to be supported, and that -if supported- it is very, very likely to put hostname->AAAA mappings of DHCPv6 clients into its DNS server, just as it adds hostname->A mappings for DHCPv4 clients.

  • morshu9001  4 days ago

    Ah, I understand. Well having dnsmasq fully automatically run DNS isn't crazy at all if you're using DHCPv6. If you're not, it sounds unreasonable for you to need to spin up your own DNS server.

    • simoncion  3 days ago

      > If you're not, it sounds unreasonable for you to need to spin up your own DNS server.

      If you're using a SOHO router, you're very likely to already be using dnsmasq; a DNS server. In that configuration, if you're using DHCP then you get your hostnames in DNS for free.

      If you're not using DHCP and don't have a DNS server running on your network that you have figured out how to update with host IP addresses, then it's on you to select memorable static addresses. [0] This is a long-standing baseline fact of IP addressing for LANs and other private networks.

      [0] Nothing prevents you from assigning addresses to your LAN machines in the fd00::/64 prefix starting from 1 (that is, fd00::1) and going up. The fd00::/8 space is for uncoordinated network-local addressing.