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ICMPv6 is used by TCP implementations to discover the largest MTU size that is allowed to reach a destination host without causing network fragmentation. A TCP implementation parses the `Packets Too Big` ICMP messages that it receives. These ICMP messages contain the MTU of the router's outgoing link in their `Data` field. Upon reception of such an ICMP message, the source TCP implementation adjusts its Maximum Segment Size (MSS) so that the packets containing the segments that it sends can be forwarded by this router without requiring fragmentation.
Two types of informational ICMPv6 messages are defined in :rfc:`4443` : `echo request` and `echo reply`, which are used to test the reachability of a destination by using :manpage:`ping6(8)`. Each host is supposed [#fpingproblems]_ to reply with an ICMP `Echo reply` message when it receives an ICMP `Echo request` message. A sample usage of :manpage:`ping6(8)` is shown below.
Another very useful debugging tool is :manpage:`traceroute6(8)`. The traceroute man page describes this tool as `"print the route packets take to network host"`. traceroute uses the `Time exceeded` ICMP messages to discover the intermediate routers on the path towards a destination. The principle behind traceroute is very simple. When a router receives an IP packet whose `Hop Limit` is set to ``1`` it is forced to return to the sending host a `Time exceeded` ICMP message containing the header and the first bytes of the discarded packet. To discover all routers on a network path, a simple solution is to first send a packet whose `Hop Limit` is set to `1`, then a packet whose `Hop Limit` is set to `2`, etc. A sample traceroute6 output is shown below.
Rate limitation of ICMP messages
High-end hardware based routers use special purpose chips on their interfaces to forward IPv6 packets at line rate. These chips are optimized to process `correct` IP packets. They are not able to create ICMP messages at line rate. When such a chip receives an IP packet that triggers an ICMP message, it interrupts the main CPU of the router and the software running on this CPU processes the packet. This CPU is much slower than the hardware acceleration found on the interfaces [Gill2004]_. It would be overloaded if it had to process IP packets at line rate and generate one ICMP message for each received packet. To protect this CPU, high-end routers limit the rate at which the hardware can interrupt the main CPU and thus the rate at which ICMP messages can be generated. This implies that not all erroneous IP packets cause the transmission of an ICMP message. The risk of overloading the main CPU of the router is also the reason why using hop-by-hop IPv6 options, including the router alert option is discouraged [#falert]_.
The IPv6 subnet
Until now, we have focused our discussion on the utilization of IPv6 on point-to-point links. Although there are point-to-point links in the Internet, mainly between routers and sometimes hosts, most of the hosts are attached to datalink layer networks such as Ethernet LANs or WiFi networks. These datalink layer networks play an important role in today's Internet and have heavily influenced the design of the operation of IPv6. To understand IPv6 and ICMPv6 completely, we first need to correctly understand the key principles behind these datalink layer technologies.
As explained earlier, devices attached to a Local Area Network can directly exchange frames among themselves. For this, each datalink layer interface on a device (host, router, ...) attached to such a network is identified by a MAC address. Each datalink layer interface includes a unique hardwired MAC address. MAC addresses are allocated to manufacturers in blocks and interface is numbered with a unique address. Thanks to the global unicity of the MAC addresses, the datalink layer service can assume that two hosts attached to a LAN have different addresses. Most LANs provide an unreliable connectionless service and a datalink layer frame has a header containing :
the source MAC address
the destination MAC address
some multiplexing information to indicate the network layer protocol that is responsible for the payload of the frame
LANs also provide a broadcast and a multicast service. The broadcast service enables a device to send a single frame to all the devices attached to the same LAN. This is done by reserving a special broadcast MAC address (typically all bits of the address are set to one). To broadcast a frame, a device simply needs to send a frame whose destination is the broadcast address. All devices attached to the datalink network will receive the frame.
The broadcast service allows easily reaching all devices attached to a datalink layer network. It has been widely used to support IP version 4. A drawback of using the broadcast service to support a network layer protocol is that a broadcast frame that contains a network layer packet is always delivered to all devices attached to the datalink network, even if some of these devices do not support the network layer protocol. The multicast service is a useful alternative to the broadcast service. To understand its operation, it is important to understand how a datalink layer interface operates. In shared media LANs, all devices are attached to the same physical medium and all frames are delivered to all devices. When such a frame is received by a datalink layer interface, it compares the destination address with the MAC address of the device. If the two addresses match, or the destination address is the broadcast address, the frame is destined to the device and its payload is delivered to the network layer protocol. The multicast service exploits this principle. A multicast address is a logical address. To receive frames destined to a multicast address in a shared media LAN, a device captures all frames having this multicast address as their destination. All IPv6 nodes are capable of capturing datalink layer frames destined to different multicast addresses.
Interactions between IPv6 and the datalink layer
IPv6 hosts and routers frequently interact with the datalink layer service. To understand the main interactions, it is useful to analyze all the packets that are exchanged when a simple network containing a few hosts and routers is built. Let us first start with a LAN containing two hosts [#fMAC]_.
Hosts ``A`` and ``B`` are attached to the same datalink layer network. They can thus exchange frames by using the MAC addresses shown in the figure above. To be able to use IPv6 to exchange packets, they need to have an IPv6 address. One possibility would be to manually configure an IPv6 address on each host. However, IPv6 provides a better solution thanks to the `link-local` IPv6 addresses. A `link-local` IPv6 address is an address that is composed by concatenating the ``fe80:://64`` prefix with the MAC address of the device. In the example above, host A would use IPv6 `link-local` address ``fe80::0223:45FF:FE67:89ab`` and host B ``fe80::0234:56FF:FE78:9abc``. With these two IPv6 addresses, the hosts can exchange IPv6 packets.
Converting MAC addresses in host identifiers
Appendix A of :rfc:`4291` provides the algorithm used to convert a 48 bits MAC address into a 64 bits host identifier. This algorithm builds upon the structure of the MAC addresses. A MAC address is represented as shown in the figure below.
A MAC address
MAC addresses are allocated in blocks of :math:`2^{20}`. When a company registers for a block of MAC addresses, it receives an identifier. company identifier is then used to populated the `c` bits of the MAC addresses. The company can allocate all addresses in starting with this prefix and manages the `m` bits as it wishes.
A MAC address converted into a 64 bits host identifier
Inside a MAC address, the two bits indicated as `0` and `g` in the figure above play a special role. The first bit indicates whether the address is universal or local. The `g` bit indicates whether this is a multicast address or a unicast address. The MAC address can be converted into a 64 bits host identifier by flipping the value of the `0` bit and inserting ``FFFE``, i.e. ``1111111111111110`` in binary, in the middle of the address as shown in the figure below. The `c`, `m` and `g` bits of the MAC address are not modified.
The next step is to connect the LAN to the Internet. For this, a router is attached to the LAN.
Assume that the LAN containing the two hosts and the router is assigned prefix ``2001:db8:1234:5678/64``. A first solution to configure the IPv6 addresses in this network is to assign them manually. A possible assignment is :
``2001:db8:1234:5678::1`` is assigned to ``router``
``2001:db8:1234:5678::AA`` is assigned to ``hostA``
``2001:db8:1234:5678::BB`` is assigned to ``hostB``
To be able to exchange IPv6 packets with ``hostB``, ``hostA`` needs to know the MAC address of the interface of ``hostB`` on the LAN. This is the `address resolution` problem. In IPv6, this problem is solved by using the Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP). NDP is specified in :rfc:`4861`. This protocol is part of ICMPv6 and uses the multicast datalink layer service.
NDP allows a host to discover the MAC address used by any other host attached to the same LAN. NDP operates in two steps. First, the querier sends a multicast ICMPv6 Neighbor Solicitation message that contains as parameter the queried IPv6 address. This multicast ICMPv6 NS is placed inside a multicast frame [#fndpmulti]_. The queried node receives the frame, parses it and replies with a unicast ICMPv6 Neighbor Advertisement that provides its own IPv6 and MAC addresses. Upon reception of the Neighbor Advertisement message, the querier stores the mapping between the IPv6 and the MAC address inside its NDP table. This table is a data structure that maintains a cache of the recently received Neighbor Advertisement. Thanks to this cache, a host only needs to send a Neighbor Solicitation message for the first packet that it sends to a given host. After this initial packet, the NDP table can provide the mapping between the destination IPv6 address and the corresponding MAC address.
The NS message can also be used to verify the reachability of a host in the local subnet. For this usage, NS messages can be sent in unicast since other nodes on the subnet do not need to process the message.
When an entry in the NDP table times out on a host, it may either be deleted or the host may try to validate it by sending the NS message again.

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read-only
Source string location
../../protocols/ipv6.rst:671
String age
3 years ago
Source string age
3 years ago
Translation file
locale/pot/protocols/ipv6.pot, string 189