Networking/Ideas/NetworkManagerMethods

Features

• Automatic link-local addresses
• Manual addresses
• Automatic global addresses
• Gateway for other hosts

Current status

Table of IPv4/IPv6 methods

Method	Protocol	LL address	Manual	Automatic	Gateway
disabled	IPv4	none	forbidden	none	none
ignore	IPv6	kernel	forbidden	kernel	none
link-local	IPv4	userspace	forbidden	none	none
link-local	IPv6	kernel	forbidden	none	none
manual	IPv4	none	required	none	none
manual	IPv6	kernel	required	none	none
auto	IPv4	none	allowed	dhcp	none
auto	IPv6	kernel	allowed	ra+dhcp	none
dhcp	IPv6	kernel	allowed	dhcp	none
shared	IPv4	none	?	none	dhcp+dns+NAT

Notes

• Even when IPv4 is in the disabled state, the network interface communicates on the L2 level.
• There's no disable method for IPv6 and its semantics is unclear (whether disable means the same as link-local, or it also applies to the link-local address which is unaffected in all other methods).
• The usage of IPv4 and IPv6 link-local addresses substatially differs. While IPv6 uses link-local addresses for *all* methods, IPv4 only uses it for the special link-local method.
• The IPv4 disable and IPv4/manual methods only differ in the number of addresses (0 versus >=1), therefore one of them is redundant.
• The IPv6 link-local and IPv6/manual methods only differ in the number of addresses (0 versus >=1), therefore one of them is redundant.
• The IPv6 dhcp method is currently defunct.
• There's no IPv6 shared method, yet.