How should IPv6 hosts register their name in DNS without using Active Directory?

Question

I have about 25 devices on a complex network that is now IPv6 enabled. Since, in IPv6-land, we use names and not really long IP addresses, how are my boxes supposed to register their dns names locally? With Active Directory and Windows domain clients, the clients register their IPs automatically, both v4 and v6, so that makes sense to me, but in a Linux/OSX-based environment I don't see that happening. Is there a simple client to powerdns or bind that each host can use to authenticate and update their internal/IPv6 IP?

Am I going about this the wrong way? If this isn't it, then how would you ever find some IoT device, like a Raspberry Pi, once you throw it on your IPv6 network (other than by using ndp or another protocol)? Just use static IPs for all non-Windows devices that you might want back into later?

Answer 1

As some have already noted (if only in comments), if you hand out addresses via DHCP you can set things up to permit dynamic DNS updates just as you would for ipv4.

The cheap-and-cheerful alternative, which works for me on tightly-controlled (eg, home) networks, is that because all my clients are getting their v6 addresses via stateless address autoconfiguration, each client will always construct for itself the same address, and I know in advance what that'll be as it's a simple munging of the MAC address. So I preenter those all in my static DNS zone files, and occasional devices - which I won't need to treat as proper network members - just don't get A and PTR records.

As a best-practice reminder, now I have routed v6 to the house I'm constantly surprised how many modern devices are v6-capable, and automatically acquire addresses, and use them - don't forget to make sure that your v6 firewall is up-to-snuff, as all these client devices are now fully functional, globally-accessible endpoints.