Non-Local IPv6 Router Advertisement

IPv6 uses router advertisements (part of the Neighbour Discovery protocol of ICMPv6) to announce the default gateway. Hosts send a router solicitation message, and routers respond with a router advertisement message. This is unlike IPv4 where gateways are typically specified as part of the DHCP messages. Another difference is that IPv6 router advertisements use multicast (IPv6 ff02::1 and MAC address 33:33:00:00:00:01 for router advertisements; IPv6 ff02::2 and MAC address 33:33:00:00:00:02 for router solicitations).

Link-local addresses

Another striking feature of IPv6 is that is uses link-local IP addresses for local communication. Since neighbour discovery is local in scope, this means that the router sends the router solicitation with a link-local IPv6 ad the source address.

By default, a host stores the source IP address and source MAC address in the routing table. Hence, you will see IPv6 link local addresses in the IPv6 routing table:

% netstat -rn -f inet6
Destination        Gateway                         Flags       Netif
default            fe80::200:24ff:fece:69ef%en0    UGcI        eth0
::1                link#1                          UHL         lo0
....

This is unlike what most users expect. For example, if the host has IPv6 address 2001:0db8:63:24ff:fece:69ef, most users would expect 2001:0db8:637::1 as the gateway:

% netstat -rn -f inet6
Destination        Gateway                         Flags       Netif
default            2001:0db8:637::1%eth0           UGcI        eth0
::1                link#1                          UHL         lo0
....

In reality, the IPv6 address of the gateway is irrelevant, as a packet on the wire would only contain the MAC destination address of the gateway. The IPv6 destination address contains the address of the final destination, not of the gateway.

Specify Global IPv6 Address for the Gateway

For easier debugging, network administrators may prefer to see a global IPv6 address as the gateway in hosts, instead of a link-local IPv6 address. Technically, it is possible to accomplish this in two ways.

• Disable link-local IPv6 addresses on the gateway
• Use the global scope IPv6 address in the router advertisement

Disable link-local IPv6 addresses on the gateway

This article is unfinished.

Use global scope IPv6 address in the router advertisement

This article is unfinished.

[[Category::IPv6]]

[[Category::Network configuration]]