Stateless IPv6 with DNS Options

Yes is it possible to have your cake and eat it!

IPv6 brought us stateless auto-configuration. Your routers do the work with router advertisements. This means no more having to configure every new VLAN with a DHCP range, worrying about your exceptions, your statics or router addresses. Now you can even have two routers on the one VLAN and your clients will happily talk to both/either. 

One of the problems to overcome is how to configure DNS while at the same time retaining a stateless IPv6 Addressing scheme. While running Dual Stack, this is not a problem; you will have already done the work in IPv4 and assigned DNS and Suffix Options to your DHCP range. Your IPv4 DNS server settings will happily serve AAAA addresses.

The days of IPv6 only networks are around the corner. They aren't here yet, so you have some time, but you will want to be ready.

First of all you will need a DHCPv6 server. If you are running DHCP on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2 this will serve. You need to bind your DHCP to a static IPv6 address on the server. There is a problem with Server 2008. DHCPv6 will not respond if it does not recognise all the options in the forward request. A solution to this can be found on KB Article 972962, and a hotfix is available. You need to set up your server options. I have at least one scope set up in the IPv6 section, although it is not used. You only need to set up a scope for a particular VLAN if you are intending to provide scope options different to that of the server options. As you are not intending to distribute IP addresses from the DHCPv6 server only the Server Options need concern you.

On your router, you need to enable the "other config flag." This flag is an option in the router advertisement package that signals the availability of other configuration options from a DHCPv6 server. This flag is an invitation, not an instruction, the client must act on it. Windows 7 does this. I have not tested other clients. The Cisco IOS interface command for this is:

ipv6 nd other-config-flag

You also then need a DHCP relay on the same interface that points back to the static binding on your DHCPv6 server. It is noted that in the past that our Cisco switches would not relay DHCP messages unless the DHCP server was running on the switch itself. So you may have to configure a DHCP pool on the switch, even if you do not use it. It is noted that on some older switches you can set up an IPv6 DHCP pool, provide the DNS server and domain prefix and user the ipv6 dhcp server command in the interface. This works as good as using the DHCPv6 server on windows. However, my latest routers running IOS-XE probably require an Enterprise Services License to do this. For the cost difference, I'll stick to relaying to a DHCPv6 Windows 2008 server running on VMware. The Cisco IOS interface command for setting up a DHCP relay is:

ipv6 dhcp relay destination [DHCPv6 Static IPv6 Address]

And that's it.

Remember that your clients will pick up the settings at the same time as they configure their IPv6 addresses, not their IPv4 addresses. This means that ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew will have no effect on picking up these options. Either a restart is needed (preferable) or you can disable/re-enable the interface (or pull the cable out.) It has been noted that the later options can result in an inconsistent routing table on Windows 7, so use with caution.