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WiFi
2272 bytes
ATM (AAL5)
9180 bytes
802.15.4
102 or 81 bytes
Token Ring
4464 bytes
FDDI
4352 bytes
Although IPv6 can send 64 KBytes long packets, few datalink layer technologies that are used today are able to send a 64 KBytes packet inside a frame. Furthermore, as illustrated in the figure below, another problem is that a host may send a packet that would be too large for one of the datalink layers used by the intermediate routers.
The need for fragmentation and reassembly
To solve these problems, IPv6 includes a packet fragmentation and reassembly mechanism. In IPv4, fragmentation was performed by both the hosts and the intermediate routers. However, experience with IPv4 has shown that fragmenting packets in routers was costly [KM1995]_. For this reason, the developers of IPv6 have decided that routers would not fragment packets anymore. In IPv6, fragmentation is only performed by the source host. If a source has to send a packet which is larger than the MTU of the outgoing interface, the packet needs to be fragmented before being transmitted. In IPv6, each packet fragment is an IPv6 packet that includes the `Fragmentation` header. This header is included by the source in each packet fragment. The receiver uses them to reassemble the received fragments.
IPv6 fragmentation header
If a router receives a packet that is too long to be forwarded, the packet is dropped and the router returns an ICMPv6 message to inform the sender of the problem. The sender can then either fragment the packet or perform Path MTU discovery. In IPv6, packet fragmentation is performed only by the source by using IPv6 options.
In IPv6, fragmentation is performed exclusively by the source host and relies on the fragmentation header. This 64 bits header is composed of six fields :
a `Next Header` field that indicates the type of the header that follows the fragmentation header
two `Reserved` fields set to `0`.
the `Fragment Offset` is a 13-bit unsigned integer that contains the offset, in 8 bytes units, of the data following this header, relative to the start of the original packet.
the `More` flag, which is set to `0` in the last fragment of a packet and to `1` in all other fragments.
the 32-bit `Identification` field indicates to which original packet a fragment belongs. When a host sends fragmented packets, it should ensure that it does not reuse the same `identification` field for packets sent to the same destination during a period of `MSL` seconds. This is easier with the 32 bits `identification` used in the IPv6 fragmentation header, than with the 16 bits `identification` field of the IPv4 header.
Some IPv6 implementations send the fragments of a packet in increasing fragment offset order, starting from the first fragment. Others send the fragments in reverse order, starting from the last fragment. The latter solution can be advantageous for the host that needs to reassemble the fragments, as it can easily allocate the buffer required to reassemble all fragments of the packet upon reception of the last fragment. When a host receives the first fragment of an IPv6 packet, it cannot know a priori the length of the entire IPv6 packet.
The figure below provides an example of a fragmented IPv6 packet containing a UDP segment. The `Next Header` type reserved for the IPv6 fragmentation option is 44.
IPv6 fragmentation example
The following pseudo-code details the IPv6 fragmentation, assuming that the packet does not contain options.
In the above pseudocode, we maintain a single 32 bits counter that is incremented for each packet that needs to be fragmented. Other implementations to compute the packet identification are possible. :rfc:`2460` only requires that two fragmented packets that are sent within the MSL between the same pair of hosts have different identifications.
The fragments of an IPv6 packet may arrive at the destination in any order, as each fragment is forwarded independently in the network and may follow different paths. Furthermore, some fragments may be lost and never reach the destination.
The reassembly algorithm used by the destination host is roughly as follows. First, the destination can verify whether a received IPv6 packet is a fragment or not by checking whether it contains a fragment header. If so, all fragments with the some identification must be reassembled together. The reassembly algorithm relies on the `Identification` field of the received fragments to associate a fragment with the corresponding packet being reassembled. Furthermore, the `Fragment Offset` field indicates the position of the fragment payload in the original non-fragmented packet. Finally, the packet with the `M` flag reset allows the destination to determine the total length of the original non-fragmented packet.
Note that the reassembly algorithm must deal with the unreliability of the IP network. This implies that a fragment may be duplicated or a fragment may never reach the destination. The destination can easily detect fragment duplication thanks to the `Fragment Offset`. To deal with fragment losses, the reassembly algorithm must bind the time during which the fragments of a packet are stored in its buffer while the packet is being reassembled. This can be implemented by starting a timer when the first fragment of a packet is received. If the packet has not been reassembled upon expiration of the timer, all fragments are discarded and the packet is considered to be lost.
Header compression on low bandwidth links
Given the size of the IPv6 header, it can cause huge overhead on low bandwidth links, especially when small packets are exchanged such as for Voice over IP applications. In such environments, several techniques can be used to reduce the overhead. A first solution is to use data compression in the datalink layer to compress all the information exchanged [Thomborson1992]_. These techniques are similar to the data compression algorithms used in tools such as :manpage:`compress(1)` or :manpage:`gzip(1)` :rfc:`1951`. They compress streams of bits without taking advantage of the fact that these streams contain IP packets with a known structure. A second solution is to compress the IP and TCP header. These header compression techniques, such as the one defined in :rfc:`5795` take advantage of the redundancy found in successive packets from the same flow to significantly reduce the size of the protocol headers. Another solution is to define a compressed encoding of the IPv6 header that matches the capabilities of the underlying datalink layer :rfc:`4944`.

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read-only
Source string location
../../protocols/ipv6.rst:433
String age
2 years ago
Source string age
2 years ago
Translation file
locale/pot/protocols/ipv6.pot, string 135