Hello Cameron
Terminology in this area is often used in various ways and can be misleading. In the strictest sense, there are three primary “modes” in which stateful, stateless, and DHCPv6 are involved:
- Stateful DHCPv6 - This is where DHCPv6 is used to assign an IPv6 address to a host as well as other parameters such as DNS server, NTP server, SIP server and others.
- Stateless DHCPv6 - This is where the IPv6 address is assigned to the host address using SLAAC (not DHCPv6), but the host looks for the DHCPv6 server for the additional network parameters.
- SLAAC or Stateless Autoconfiguration - In this mode, no DHCPv6 server is involved at all. The router on the local subnet provides the host with its network parameters of IPv6 address and default gateway.
Note that, unlike DHCP, in none of the above modes does the DHCPv6 server ever provide a default gateway. That is provided only by the local router on the network segment.
For more information, take a look at:
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz