We all know that IPv6 is drilling our internet world and it's going to replace IPv4. There is going to be revolution. DHCP is one of those areas. Architecture of DHCPv4 (IPv4 system) and DHCPv6 (IPv6) are totally different. I will try my best to explain the differences in very easy language.
1. In IPv4 systems, hosts send broadcast traffic requesting an IP address in hope to get reply from the DHCP server, thus network doesn't know how far to send the request.
But all IPv6 systems support multicasting and DHCPv6 servers are ready to receive DHCPv6 multicast packets. Thus network knows where to send the DHCP requests from clients. (FF02::1:2 is a link-scoped multicast address used by a client to communicate with neighboring i.e on-link, relay agents and server. All servers and relay agents are members of this multicast group)
[Wireshark capture for DHCPv6: notice a link-scoped multicast address. I intentionally hid my link-local address(IPv6) of my laptop which acts as IPv6 host ]
2. In IPv4 systems, clients doesn't have any valid IP address to start with. It uses 0.0.0.0 as it's initial IP address and sends request (requesting IP address and network configuration ) broadcast traffic to 255.255.255.255 in hope to get response from DHCP servers.
(Here is the complete DHCPv4 request-reply messaging in IPv4 environment: captured by wireshark using filter BOOTP. DHCPv4 uses BOOTP)
In IPv6 systems, each hosts have valid link-local address that can be used to send traffic on the link it is connected to, thus makes it possible to send request to DHCP server for REAL address.
There are more to talk... But I have to watch NBA finals: MAVS vs Heat. :D
I will keep on updating this article.
Reference:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3315.txt
http://www.isc.org/community/blog/201104/isc-dhcp-and-ipv6-dhcpv6-story
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Stateless_address_autoconfiguration
