> > > Anyway, last night (no joke :-( ) my parents called me up to > > > troubleshoot their home DSL router. They had no external > > connectivity. > > > I had them log into the home router, and we quickly found > > they had no > > > WAN IP address. I had them re-enter their WAN username/password > > > credentials, and everything then was back to normal for them. > > > > > > We didn't have to worry about: > > > (1) recognizing a temporary signaling IP address > > > > That's trivial. By now anyone who troubleshoots networks can > > recognize IPv4 and IPv6 link-local addresses. And they know > > you cannot get far using such IP addresses. > > My parents are not networking experts.
We were talking about you as the person troubleshooting their system. I wasn't expecting them to know that. Like they'd not know what various DHCP states resulting from EAP/DHCP or other DHCP configurations would mean. > At all. But if they buy an > off-the-shelf broadband router, they are expected to troubleshoot its > various states. > > A truism is that more states = more complexity when debugging. EAP and network access authentication related states do not disappear just because you are embedding EAP inside the host configuration protocol. It just happens that the host configuration protocol all of a sudden starts having a combined state machine that reflects all possible combinations of the former type states and the latter types. How is that a good thing? A limited-access IP address configured before access authentication is also a good thing. Like Alan was suggesting, it helps the end user achieve limited connectivity for troubleshooting. And also consider emergency services. They expect you to dial 911 even without authentication. There you need an IP address. Btw, whether you like it or nor, even with your EAP/DHCP solution you get one IPv6 link-local address on the CPE before authentication. What do you want to do with that one? Alper > > Eric _______________________________________________ Int-area mailing list [email protected] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/int-area
