One less reason to adopt IPv6?

For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security, and easier network administration through automatic device configuration.

Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits -- autoconfiguration -- may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6.

Autoconfiguration vs. DHCPv6 has become a point of contention among IPv6 proponents. As recently as last month, the IETF -- the standards body that created IPv6 and DHCPv6 -- held a lively online debate about rethinking autoconfiguration in light of DHCPv6.