When deploying IPv6 in an organization, a number of decisions about autoconfiguration must be made. Some factors that could potentially influence the decision include the amount of machines, heterogeneity of operating systems, and frequency of mobility. In general, organizations will either opt to use DHCPv6, stateless autoconfiguration, or a combination of the two.
For most organizations that already provide IPv4 connectivity and autoconfiguration for their hosts, stateless autoconfiguration is most likely the best choice. Almost all modern operating systems with an IPv6 stack support stateless autoconfiguration, and the required configuration is usually minimal, if it exists at all. However, since stateless autoconfiguration is required to use a /64 or larger prefix, this can be quite wasteful or impossible for organizations with a small number of hosts per subnet or ones that have been only delegated a /64 by their ISP. However, such a waste of abundant resources in networking is quite common, since the scarce resources are optimized.
If an organization wishes to only use IPv6 connectivity, DHCPv6 starts to look like a better choice, due to the limits of stateless autoconfiguration. However, in this case, both methods will require some configuration changes on each host on the network, either updating DNS server settings or installing a DHCPv6 client. This method will allow smaller prefixes to be used on subnets, therefore making more efficient use of the address space.
A third method of autoconfiguration that promises to scale the best is a combination of DHCPv6 and stateless autoconfiguration. Most of the hosts on a LAN would use stateless autoconfiguration, while newer hosts could start migrating to DHCPv6 without needing any changes in network services.
Even though DHCPv6 software is still young, there are two projects that show some promise. The ``Dibbler'' project aims at providing a portable DHCPv6 implementation, currently providing binaries for Linux 2.4/2.6 and Windows XP. Proposed ports include *BSD and Windows 2000. The other project, entitled simply ``DHCPv6'' is developing a client and server implementation for Linux, and is hosted at SourceForge. Once this software has matured, vendors will most likely start integrating DHCPv6 clients and servers into operating systems, paving the way for IPv6-only networks gaining in popularity.