> SLAAC? Literally a hack that accidentally caught on because some vendor implemented it sooner than DHCPv6 for some reason.

The history I recall is very much a academics designing theoretical standards vs operators who actually implement the damn things.

The academics designed the standards around the use of SLAAC deliberately and intentionally. DHCPv6 was the ‘hack’ that operators implemented after the fact.

I’m sure there’s an RFC somewhere that’ll prove this one way or another, if anyone else reading this cares enough to determine for sure (Duty Calls).