Replacing DHCP with IPv6

The IPv6 protocol stack software that ships with Windows 2003 and Windows XP (and the IPv6 technology preview for Windows 2000) configures network addresses automatically at startup. Can we use IPv6 on the LAN instead of Dynamic Host Configuration Protoc

The IPv6 protocol stack software that ships with Windows 2003 and Windows XP (and the IPv6 technology preview for Windows 2000) configures network addresses automatically at start-up. Can we use IPv6 on the LAN instead of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol to configure network interfaces and keep LAN traffic private from the Internet without using network address translation?

Microsoft’s IPv6 software documentation says it is not for production use, but it is a good time to begin IPv6 testing. Local link addresses are configured based on a network interface card’s media access control address, so DHCP might not be necessary in the IPv6 LAN. The downside is these addresses are easily spoofed. IPv4 must be installed to use IPv6. Win 2003 lets you add IPv6 through the Network Connections’ properties dialog. Everything else is done from the command line. On XP, use the ‘ipv6 install’ command for installation. The command ‘ipconfig/all’ displays your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Use ‘ping ::1’ to ping your local IPv6 localhost address. Pinging IPv6 hosts using their 128-bit address can be painful, even in hexadecimal. Host tables and DNS can be used to provide IPv6 name service. By enabling Internet Connection Sharing, you can use IPv6 on XP as a “6 to 4” router to tunnel IPv6 traffic over an IPv4 network. For more information, see this Microsoft article collection.