If the Target and Destination Addresses are the same, the host MUST
treat the Target as on-link. If the Target Address is not the same
as the Destination Address, the host MUST set IsRouter to TRUE for
the target. If the Target and Destination Addresses are the same,
however, one cannot reliably determine whether the Target Address is
a router. Consequently, newly created Neighbor Cache entries should
set the IsRouter flag to FALSE, while existing cache entries should
leave the flag unchanged. If the Target is a router, subsequent
Neighbor Advertisement or Router Advertisement messages will update
IsRouter accordingly.
Redirect messages apply to all flows that are being sent to a given
destination. That is, upon receipt of a Redirect for a Destination
Address, all Destination Cache entries to that address should be
updated to use the specified next-hop, regardless of the contents of
the Flow Label field that appears in the Redirected Header option.
A host MAY have a configuration switch that can be set to make it
ignore a Redirect message that does not have an IP Authentication
header.
A host MUST NOT send Redirect messages.
9. EXTENSIBILITY - OPTION PROCESSING
Options provide a mechanism for encoding variable length fields,
fields that may appear multiple times in the same packet, or
information that may not appear in all packets. Options can also be
used to add additional functionality to future versions of ND.
In order to ensure that future extensions properly coexist with
current implementations, all nodes MUST silently ignore any options
they do not recognize in received ND packets and continue processing
the packet. All options specified in this document MUST be
recognized. A node MUST NOT ignore valid options just because the ND
message contains unrecognized ones.
The current set of options is defined in such a way that receivers
can process multiple options in the same packet independently of each
other. In order to maintain these properties future options SHOULD
follow the simple rule:
The option MUST NOT depend on the presence or absence of any
other options. The semantics of an option should depend only on
the information in the fixed part of the ND packet and on the
information contained in the option itself.
Adhering to the above rule has the following benefits:
1) Receivers can process options independently of one another. For
example, an implementation can choose to process the Prefix
Information option contained in a Router Advertisement message
in a user-space process while the link-layer address option in
the same message is processed by routines in the kernel.
2) Should the number of options cause a packet to exceed a link's
MTU, multiple packets can carry subsets of the options without
any change in semantics.
3) Senders MAY send a subset of options in different packets. For
instance, if a prefix's Valid and Preferred Lifetime are high
enough, it might not be necessary to include the Prefix
Information option in every Router Advertisement. In addition,
different routers might send different sets of options. Thus, a
receiver MUST NOT associate any action with the absence of an
option in a particular packet. This protocol specifies that
receivers should only act on the expiration of timers and on the
information that is received in the packets.
Options in Neighbor Discovery packets can appear in any order;
receivers MUST be prepared to process them independently of their
order. There can also be multiple instances of the same option in a
message (e.g., Prefix Information options).
If the number of included options in a Router Advertisement causes
the advertisement's size to exceed the link MTU, the router can send
multiple separate advertisements each containing a subset of the
options.
The amount of data to include in the Redirected Header option MUST be
limited so that the entire redirect packet does not exceed 1280
octets.
All options are a multiple of 8 octets of length, ensuring
appropriate alignment without any "pad" options. The fields in the
options (as well as the fields in ND packets) are defined to align on
their natural boundaries (e.g., a 16-bit field is aligned on a 16-bit
boundary) with the exception of the 128-bit IP addresses/prefixes,
which are aligned on a 64-bit boundary. The link-layer address field
contains an uninterpreted octet string; it is aligned on an 8-bit
boundary.
The size of an ND packet including the IP header is limited to the
link MTU (which is at least 1280 octets). When adding options to an
ND packet a node MUST NOT exceed the link MTU.
Future versions of this protocol may define new option types.
Receivers MUST silently ignore any options they do not recognize and
continue processing the message.
10. PROTOCOL CONSTANTS
Router constants:
MAX_INITIAL_RTR_ADVERT_INTERVAL 16 seconds
MAX_INITIAL_RTR_ADVERTISEMENTS 3 transmissions
MAX_FINAL_RTR_ADVERTISEMENTS 3 transmissions
MIN_DELAY_BETWEEN_RAS 3 seconds
MAX_RA_DELAY_TIME .5 seconds
Host constants:
MAX_RTR_SOLICITATION_DELAY 1 second
RTR_SOLICITATION_INTERVAL 4 seconds
MAX_RTR_SOLICITATIONS 3 transmissions
Node constants:
MAX_MULTICAST_SOLICIT 3 transmissions
MAX_UNICAST_SOLICIT 3 transmissions
MAX_ANYCAST_DELAY_TIME 1 second
MAX_NEIGHBOR_ADVERTISEMENT 3 transmissions
REACHABLE_TIME 30,000 milliseconds
RETRANS_TIMER 1,000 milliseconds
DELAY_FIRST_PROBE_TIME 5 seconds
MIN_RANDOM_FACTOR .5
MAX_RANDOM_FACTOR 1.5
Additional protocol constants are defined with the message formats in
Section 4.
All protocol constants are subject to change in future revisions of
the protocol.
The constants in this specification may be overridden by specific
documents that describe how IPv6 operates over different link layers.
This rule allows Neighbor Discovery to operate over links with widely
varying performance characteristics.
11. SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS
Neighbor Discovery is subject to attacks that cause IP packets to
flow to unexpected places. Such attacks can be used to cause denial
of service but also allow nodes to intercept and optionally modify
packets destined for other nodes.
The protocol reduces the exposure to such threats in the absence of
authentication by ignoring ND packets received from off-link senders.
The Hop Limit field of all received packets is verified to contain
255, the maximum legal value. Because routers decrement the Hop
Limit on all packets they forward, received packets containing a Hop
Limit of 255 must have originated from a neighbor.
An example of denial of service attacks is that a node on the link
that can send packets with an arbitrary IP source address can both
advertise itself as a default router and also send "forged" Router
Advertisement messages that immediately time out all other default
routers as well as all on-link prefixes. An intruder can achieve
this by sending out multiple Router Advertisements, one for each
legitimate router, with the source address set to the address of
another router, the Router Lifetime field set to zero, and the
Preferred and Valid lifetimes set to zero for all the prefixes. Such
an attack would cause all packets, for both on-link and off-link
destinations, to go to the rogue router. That router can then
selectively examine, modify or drop all packets sent on the link. The
Neighbor Unreachability Detection will not detect such a black hole
as long as the rogue router politely answers the NUD probes with a
Neighbor Advertisement with the R-bit set.
Many link layers are also subject to different denial of service
attacks such as continuously occupying the link in CSMA/CD networks
(e.g., by sending packets closely back-to-back or asserting the
collision signal on the link), or originating packets with somebody
else's source MAC address to confuse, e.g., Ethernet switches.
The trust model for redirects is the same as in IPv4. A redirect is
accepted only if received from the same router that is currently
being used for that destination. It is natural to trust the routers
on the link. If a host has been redirected to another node (i.e.,
the destination is on-link) there is no way to prevent the target
from issuing another redirect to some other destination. However,
this exposure is no worse than it was; the target host, once
subverted, could always act as a hidden router to forward traffic
elsewhere.
The protocol contains no mechanism to determine which neighbors are
authorized to send a particular type of message (e.g., Router
Advertisements); any neighbor, presumably even in the presence of
authentication, can send Router Advertisement messages thereby being
able to cause denial of service. Furthermore, any neighbor can send
proxy Neighbor Advertisements as well as unsolicited Neighbor
Advertisements as a potential denial of service attack.
Neighbor Discovery protocol packet exchanges can be authenticated
using the IP Authentication Header [IPv6-AUTH]. A node SHOULD
include an Authentication Header when sending Neighbor Discovery
packets if a security association for use with the IP Authentication
Header exists for the destination address. The security associations
may have been created through manual configuration or through the
operation of some key management protocol.
Received Authentication Headers in Neighbor Discovery packets MUST be
verified for correctness and packets with incorrect authentication
MUST be ignored.
It SHOULD be possible for the system administrator to configure a
node to ignore any Neighbor Discovery messages that are not
authenticated using either the Authentication Header or Encapsulating
Security Payload. The configuration technique for this MUST be
documented. Such a switch SHOULD default to allowing unauthenticated
messages.
Confidentiality issues are addressed by the IP Security Architecture
and the IP Encapsulating Security Payload documents [IPv6-SA, IPv6-
ESP].
12. RENUMBERING CONSIDERATIONS
The Neighbor Discovery protocol together with IPv6 Address
Autoconfiguration [ADDRCONF] provides mechanisms to aid in
renumbering - new prefixes and addresses can be introduced and old
ones can be deprecated and removed.
The robustness of these mechanisms is based on all the nodes on the
link receiving the Router Advertisement messages in a timely manner.
However, a host might be turned off or be unreachable for an extended
period of time (i.e., a machine is powered down for months after a
project terminates). It is possible to preserve robust renumbering
in such cases but it does place some constraints on how long prefixes
must be advertised.
Consider the following example in which a prefix is initially
advertised with a lifetime of 2 months, but on August 1st it is
determined that the prefix needs to be deprecated and removed due to
renumbering by September 1st. This can be done by reducing the
advertised lifetime to 1 week starting on August 1st and as the
cutoff gets closer the lifetimes can be made shorter until by
September 1st the prefix is advertised with a zero lifetime. The
point is that, if one or more nodes were unplugged from the link
prior to September 1st they might still think that the prefix is
valid since the last lifetime they received was 2 months. Thus if a
node was unplugged on July 31st it thinks the prefix is valid until
September 30th. If that node is plugged back in prior to September
30th it may continue to use the old prefix. The only way to force a
node to stop using a prefix that was previously advertised with a
long Lifetime is to have that node receive an advertisement for that
prefix that changes the lifetime downward. The solution in this
example is simple: continue advertising the prefix with a lifetime of
0 from September 1st until October 1st.
In general, in order to be robust against nodes that might be
unplugged from the link it is important to track the furthest into
the future a particular prefix can be viewed valid by any node on the
link. The prefix must then be advertised with a 0 Lifetime until
that point in future. This "furthest into the future" time is simply
the maximum, over all Router Advertisements, of the time the
advertisement was sent plus the prefix's Lifetime contained in the
advertisement.
The above has an important implication on using infinite lifetimes.
If a prefix is advertised with an infinite lifetime, and that prefix
later needs to be renumbered, it is undesirable to continue
advertising that prefix with a zero lifetime forever. Thus either
infinite lifetimes should be avoided or there must be a limit on how
long time a node can be unplugged from the link before it is plugged
back in again. However, it is unclear how the network administrator
can enforce a limit on how long time hosts such as laptops can be
unplugged from the link.
Network administrators should give serious consideration to using
relatively short lifetimes (i.e., no more than a few weeks). While
it might appear that using long lifetimes would help insure
robustness, in reality a host will be unable to communicate in the
absence of properly functioning routers. Such routers will be
sending Router Advertisements that contain appropriate (and current)
prefixes. A host connected to a network that has no functioning
routers is likely to have more serious problems than just a lack of a
valid prefix and address.
The above discussion does not distinguish between the preferred and
valid lifetimes. For all practical purposes it is probably
sufficient to track the valid lifetime since the preferred lifetime
will not exceed the valid lifetime.
REFERENCES
[ADDRCONF] Thomson, S. and T. Narten, "IPv6 Address
Autoconfiguration", RFC2462, December 1998.
[ADDR-ARCH] Hinden, R. and S. Deering, "IP Version 6 Addressing
Architecture", RFC2373, July 1998.
[ANYCST] Partridge, C., Mendez, T. and W. Milliken, "Host
Anycasting Service", RFC1546, November 1993.
[ARP] Plummer, D., "An Ethernet Address Resolution Protocol",
STD 37, RFC826, November 1982.
[HR-CL] Braden, R., Editor, "Requirements for Internet Hosts --
Communication Layers", STD 3, RFC1122, October 1989.
[ICMPv4] Postel, J., "Internet Control Message Protocol", STD 5,
RFC792, September 1981.
[ICMPv6] Conta, A. and S. Deering, "Internet Control Message
Protocol (ICMPv6) for the Internet Protocol Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC2463, December 1998.
[IPv6] Deering, S. and R. Hinden, "Internet Protocol, Version 6
(IPv6) Specification", RFC2460, December 1998.
[IPv6-ETHER] Crawford, M., "Transmission of IPv6 Packets over
Ethernet Networks", RFC2464, December 1998.
[IPv6-SA] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "Security Architecture for the
Internet Protocol", RFC2401, November 1998.
[IPv6-AUTH] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Authentication Header",
RFC2402, November 1998.
[IPv6-ESP] Kent, S. and R. Atkinson, "IP Encapsulating Security
Payload (ESP)", RFC2406, November 1998.
[KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC2119, March 1997.
[RDISC] Deering, S., "ICMP Router Discovery Messages", RFC1256,
September 1991.
[SH-MEDIA] Braden, R., Postel, J. and Y. Rekhter, "Internet
Architecture Extensions for Shared Media", RFC1620, May
1994.
[ASSIGNED] Reynolds, J. and J. Postel, "ASSIGNED NUMBERS", STD 2,
RFC1700, October 1994. See also:
http://www.iana.org/numbers.html
[SYNC] S. Floyd, V. Jacobson, "The Synchronization of Periodic
Routing Messages", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking,
April 1994. ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/papers/sync_94.ps.Z
Authors' Addresses
Thomas Narten
IBM Corporation
P.O. Box 12195
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2195
USA
Phone: +1 919 254 7798
EMail: narten@raleigh.ibm.com
Erik Nordmark
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
901 San Antonio Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303
USA
Phone: +1 650 786 5166
Fax: +1 650 786 5896
EMail: nordmark@sun.com
William Allen Simpson
Daydreamer
Computer Systems Consulting Services
1384 Fontaine
Madison Heights, Michigan 48071
USA
EMail: Bill.Simpson@um.cc.umich.edu
bsimpson@MorningStar.com
APPENDIX A: MULTIHOMED HOSTS
There are a number of complicating issues that arise when Neighbor
Discovery is used by hosts that have multiple interfaces. This
section does not attempt to define the proper operation of multihomed
hosts with regard to Neighbor Discovery. Rather, it identifies
issues that require further study. Implementors are encouraged to
experiment with various approaches to making Neighbor Discovery work
on multihomed hosts and to report their experiences.
If a multihomed host receives Router Advertisements on all of its
interfaces, it will (probably) have learned on-link prefixes for the
addresses residing on each link. When a packet must be sent through
a router, however, selecting the "wrong" router can result in a
suboptimal or non-functioning path. There are number of issues to
consider:
1) In order for a router to send a redirect, it must determine that
the packet it is forwarding originates from a neighbor. The
standard test for this case is to compare the source address of
the packet to the list of on-link prefixes associated with the
interface on which the packet was received. If the originating
host is multihomed, however, the source address it uses may
belong to an interface other than the interface from which it
was sent. In such cases, a router will not send redirects, and
suboptimal routing is likely. In order to be redirected, the
sending host must always send packets out the interface
corresponding to the outgoing packet's source address. Note
that this issue never arises with non-multihomed hosts; they
only have one interface.
2) If the selected first-hop router does not have a route at all
for the destination, it will be unable to deliver the packet.
However, the destination may be reachable through a router on
one of the other interfaces. Neighbor Discovery does not
address this scenario; it does not arise in the non-multihomed
case.
3) Even if the first-hop router does have a route for a
destination, there may be a better route via another interface.
No mechanism exists for the multihomed host to detect this
situation.
If a multihomed host fails to receive Router Advertisements on one or
more of its interfaces, it will not know (in the absence of
configured information) which destinations are on-link on the
affected interface(s). This leads to a number of problems:
1) If no Router Advertisement is received on any interfaces, a
multihomed host will have no way of knowing which interface to
send packets out on, even for on-link destinations. Under
similar conditions in the non-multihomed host case, a node
treats all destinations as residing on-link, and communication
proceeds. In the multihomed case, however, additional
information is needed to select the proper outgoing interface.
Alternatively, a node could attempt to perform address
resolution on all interfaces, a step involving significant
complexity that is not present in the non-multihomed host case.
2) If Router Advertisements are received on some, but not all
interfaces, a multihomed host could choose to only send packets
out on the interfaces on which it has received Router
Advertisements. A key assumption made here, however, is that
routers on those other interfaces will be able to route packets
to the ultimate destination, even when those destinations reside
on the subnet to which the sender connects, but has no on-link
prefix information. Should the assumption be FALSE,
communication would fail. Even if the assumption holds, packets
will traverse a sub-optimal path.
APPENDIX B: FUTURE EXTENSIONS
Possible extensions for future study are:
o Using dynamic timers to be able to adapt to links with widely
varying delay. Measuring round trip times, however, requires
acknowledgments and sequence numbers in order to match received
Neighbor Advertisements with the actual Neighbor Solicitation that
triggered the advertisement. Implementors wishing to experiment
with such a facility could do so in a backwards-compatible way by
defining a new option carrying the necessary information. Nodes
not understanding the option would simply ignore it.
o Adding capabilities to facilitate the operation over links that
currently require hosts to register with an address resolution
server. This could for instance enable routers to ask hosts to
send them periodic unsolicited advertisements. Once again this
can be added using a new option sent in the Router Advertisements.
o Adding additional procedures for links where asymmetric and non-
transitive reachability is part of normal operations. Such
procedures might allow hosts and routers to find usable paths on,
e.g., radio links.
APPENDIX C: STATE MACHINE FOR THE REACHABILITY STATE
This appendix contains a summary of the rules specified in Sections
7.2 and 7.3. This document does not mandate that implementations
adhere to this model as long as their external behavior is consistent
with that described in this document.
When performing address resolution and Neighbor Unreachability
Detection the following state transitions apply using the conceptual
model:
State Event Action New state
- Packet to send. Create entry. INCOMPLETE
Send multicast NS.
Start retransmit timer
INCOMPLETE Retransmit timeout, Retransmit NS INCOMPLETE
less than N Start retransmit timer
retransmissions.
INCOMPLETE Retransmit timeout, Discard entry -
N or more Send ICMP error
retransmissions.
INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=0, Record link-layer STALE
Override=any address. Send queued
packets.
INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=1, Record link-layer REACHABLE
Override=any address. Send queued
packets.
!INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=1, - REACHABLE
Override=0
Same link-layer
address as cached.
REACHABLE NA, Solicited=1, - STALE
Override=0
Different link-layer
address than cached.
STALE or PROBE NA, Solicited=1, - unchanged
Override=0
Different link-layer
address than cached.
!INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=1, Record link-layer REACHABLE
Override=1 address (if
different).
!INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=0, - unchanged
Override=0
!INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=0, - unchanged
Override=1
Same link-layer
address as cached.
!INCOMPLETE NA, Solicited=0, Record link-layer STALE
Override=1 address.
Different link-layer
address than cached.
!INCOMPLETE upper-layer reachability - REACHABLE
confirmation
REACHABLE timeout, more than - STALE
N seconds since
reachability confirm.
STALE Sending packet Start delay timer DELAY
DELAY Delay timeout Send unicast NS probe PROBE
Start retransmit timer
PROBE Retransmit timeout, Retransmit NS PROBE
less than N
retransmissions.
PROBE Retransmit timeout, Discard entry -
N or more
retransmissions.
The state transitions for receiving unsolicited information other
than Neighbor Advertisement messages apply to either the source of
the packet (for Neighbor Solicitation, Router Solicitation, and
Router Advertisement messages) or the target address (for Redirect
messages) as follows:
State Event Action New state
- NS, RS, RA, Redirect Create entry. STALE
INCOMPLETE NS, RS, RA, Redirect Record link-layer STALE
address. Send queued
packets.
!INCOMPLETE NS, RS, RA, Redirect Update link-layer STALE
Different link-layer address
address than cached.
!INCOMPLETE NS, RS, RA, Redirect - unchanged
Same link-layer
address as cached.
APPENDIX D: SUMMARY OF ISROUTER RULES
This appendix presents a summary of the rules for maintaining the
IsRouter flag as specified in this document.
The background for these rules is that the ND messages contain,
either implicitly or explicitly, information that indicates whether
or not the sender (or Target Address) is a host or a router. The
following assumptions are used:
- The sender of a Router Solicitation is implicitly assumed to be a
host since there is no need for routers to send such messages.
- The sender of a Router Advertisement is implicitly assumed to be a
router.
- Neighbor Solicitation messages do not contain either an implicit
or explicit indication about the sender. Both hosts and routers
send such messages.
- Neighbor Advertisement messages contain an explicit "IsRouter
flag", the R-bit.
- The target of the redirect, when the target differs from the
destination address in the packet being redirected, is implicitly
assumed to be a router. This is a natural assumption since that
node is expected to be able to forward the packets towards the
destination.
- The target of the redirect, when the target is the same as the
destination, does not carry any host vs. router information. All
that is known is that the destination (i.e. target) is on-link but
it could be either a host or a router.
The rules for setting the IsRouter flag are based on the information
content above. If an ND message contains explicit or implicit
information the receipt of the message will cause the IsRouter flag
to be updated. But when there is no host vs. router information in
the ND message the receipt of the message MUST NOT cause a change to
the IsRouter state. When the receipt of such a message causes a
Neighbor Cache entry to be created this document specifies that the
IsRouter flag be set to FALSE. There is greater potential for
mischief when a node incorrectly thinks a host is a router, than the
other way around. In these cases a subsequent Neighbor Advertisement
or Router Advertisement message will set the correct IsRouter value.
APPENDIX E: IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES
Appendix E.1: Reachability confirmations
Neighbor Unreachability Detection requires explicit confirmation that
a forward-path is functioning properly. To avoid the need for
Neighbor Solicitation probe messages, upper layer protocols should
provide such an indication when the cost of doing so is small.
Reliable connection-oriented protocols such as TCP are generally
aware when the forward-path is working. When TCP sends (or receives)
data, for instance, it updates its window sequence numbers, sets and
cancels retransmit timers, etc. Specific scenarios that usually
indicate a properly functioning forward-path include:
- Receipt of an acknowledgement that covers a sequence number (e.g.,
data) not previously acknowledged indicates that the forward path
was working at the time the data was sent.
- Completion of the initial three-way handshake is a special case of
the previous rule; although no data is sent during the handshake,
the SYN flags are counted as data from the sequence number
perspective. This applies to both the SYN+ACK for the active open
the ACK of that packet on the passively opening peer.
- Receipt of new data (i.e., data not previously received) indicates
that the forward-path was working at the time an acknowledgement
was sent that advanced the peer's send window that allowed the new
data to be sent.
To minimize the cost of communicating reachability information
between the TCP and IP layers, an implementation may wish to rate-
limit the reachability confirmations its sends IP. One possibility
is to process reachability only every few packets. For example, one
might update reachability information once per round trip time, if an
implementation only has one round trip timer per connection. For
those implementations that cache Destination Cache entries within
control blocks, it may be possible to update the Neighbor Cache entry
directly (i.e., without an expensive lookup) once the TCP packet has
been demultiplexed to its corresponding control block. For other
implementation it may be possible to piggyback the reachability
confirmation on the next packet submitted to IP assuming that the
implementation guards against the piggybacked confirmation becoming
stale when no packets are sent to IP for an extended period of time.
TCP must also guard against thinking "stale" information indicates
current reachability. For example, new data received 30 minutes
after a window has opened up does not constitute a confirmation that
the path is currently working. In merely indicates that 30 minutes
ago the window update reached the peer i.e. the path was working at
that point in time. An implementation must also take into account
TCP zero-window probes that are sent even if the path is broken and
the window update did not reach the peer.
For UDP based applications (RPC, DNS) it is relatively simple to make
the client send reachability confirmations when the response packet
is received. It is more difficult and in some cases impossible for
the server to generate such confirmations since there is no flow
control, i.e., the server can not determine whether a received
request indicates that a previous response reached the client.
Note that an implementation can not use negative upper-layer advise
as a replacement for the Neighbor Unreachability Detection algorithm.
Negative advise (e.g. from TCP when there are excessive
retransmissions) could serve as a hint that the forward path from the
sender of the data might not be working. But it would fail to detect
when the path from the receiver of the data is not functioning
causing, none of the acknowledgement packets to reach the sender.
APPENDIX F: CHANGES SINCE RFC1970
o Removed all references to the IPv6 priority field.
o Replaced definition of solicited node multicast address with a
reference to the [ADDR-ARCH] specification. That specification
says that "the solicited-node multicast address is formed by
taking the low-order 24 bits of the address (unicast or anycast)
and appending those bits to the prefix FF02:0:0:0:0:1:FF00::/104".
o Updated the references section to list (new) RFCnumbers.
o Updated the text in section 7.2.5 and the tables in appendix C to
have the receipt of an NS message update the state of an existing
neighbor cache entry only if the link-layer address is different
than the recorded link-layer address.
o Added an explicit check in section 7.1.1 so that received NS
messages from an unsolicited address must be sent the solicited-
node multicast address; if sent to unicast destination, silently
discard.
o Added a requirement in section 6.2.1 that Lifetimes be
configurable in either of two ways: as a fixed value that doesn't
change over time, or one that decrements in real time.
o Added text in section 6.2.7 to relax the consistency checks on
prefix lifetimes when the lifetimes are configured to decrement in
real time. This is needed to avoid false alarms due to link
propagation delay and lack of synchronized clocks.
o Added text to section 6.3.4 to point out that [ADDRCONF] might
ignore short lifetimes but that Neighbor Discovery does not ignore
short prefix lifetimes.
o Clarified the rules for RS and NS packets with an unspecified
source address. Such packets MUST NOT include source link-layer
address option; verified by receivers.
o Clarified in section 7.2.3 that addresses for which the node
proxies are acceptable in NS messages. Previously the text only
mentioned unicast and anycast addresses assigned to the interface
(i.e., wasn't clear that proxy addresses were allowed).
o Tightened up ambiguities an inconsistencies regarding when to set
the IsRouter flag in Neighbor Cache entries. Added an appendix to
summarize these rules.
o Added a section on renumbering considerations to clarify how long
prefixes have to be advertised when the lifetime(s) are reduced.
o Added additional text to the rules in section 7 for the NS/NA
packets used for NUD probes so that the Link-Layer Address options
can be omitted from these packets in certain cases without causing
an infinite NS "recursion". Specifically, added text that permits
the Link-Layer address to be omitted in unicast solicitations
(i.e., MAY language).
o Changed the default AdvValidLifetime from infinity to 30 days.
o Changed the constant "576" to "1280" in places where its context
was that of the minimum sized IP packet that all links must be
able to carry.
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