[TriLUG] IPv6 equivalent to dhclient list

[Alan Porter]

> I think you're stuck calling ip from the CGI... but why is
> that bad?

I guess it just seems pretty lame that all I can see is "recent talkers".
A host that does not really do much on IPv6 after bootup would pretty
much be invisible until he spoke up.

I guess this is really making me question what is means to be "on my
network".

On IPv4, I have my lease time set to 10 minutes, so I can look at the
leases file and tell which hosts are powered on, because each one is
running a daemon that checks in with the server every five minutes.
So I suppose one answer would be to make sure my hosts are all running
some IPv6-only daemon that chats every so often.

Do IPv6 hosts check back in with the router periodically?  Do they
respond to periodic multicast messages?  Is there any reason to believe
that the "ip -6 neighbor" list would be up-to-date?  Should I have the
router send out shout-outs to keep the hosts chatting, like a game of
IPv6 Marco-Polo?

One other thing that's nice about the DHCP/DNS combination on IPv4 is
the way I can address any host by name.  I've lost this in IPv6. Since
there is no central addressing authority in the house, I can't use it
to resolve names in IPv6 space.  And since prefixes change between my
house and the IPv6-supporting coffee shop, I can't use a global DNS
solution.  The only machine in my house that I can reliably ping6 by
name is "bender", the router itself (whose IPv6 address is hard-coded
in the DNS server).

I'm just curious if others have made this transition, and if they have
also felt like they are losing some of the old functionality... or if
I am just "doing it wrong" (tm) and there is a better way to address
IPv6 hosts by name.

Alan