Stateful vs Stateless IPv6? - Network Engineering Stack Exchange Stateful autoconfiguration of IPv6 is the equivalent to the use of DHCP in IPv4 It requires a DHCPv6 service to provide the IPv6 address to the client device and that both client device and server maintain the "state" of that address (i e lease time, etc) Stateless autoconfiguration of IPv6 allows the client device to self-configure its IPv6 address and routing based on the router