DHCPv6
DHCPv6 Life Cycle, Security

Address Life Cycle

Assigned addresses are allocated for a limited time period.

The client must request for a renewal before half of assigned period expires.

All the activity of DHCPv6 procedure typically comes from the client. However, sometimes server has to invoke DHCPv6 dialog. There could be situations where change of network parameters causes that server needs the client to adapt to the new situation.

Security

Some network administrators may wish to provide authentication of the source and contents of DHCPv6 messages. For example, clients may be subject to denial of service attacks through the use of bogus DHCPv6 servers, or may simply be misconfigured due to unintentionally instantiated DHCP servers.

The client that wants to authenticate DHCPv6 communication, will include the Authentication option into initial message (Solicit). Server must respond with Authentication option included into its Advertise message. The authentication information carried in the Authentication option can be used to reliably identify the source of a DHCPv6 message and to confirm that the contents of the DHCP message have not been tampered with.