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IPv6 address - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

IPv6 address
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An Internet Protocol Version 6 address (IPv6 address) is a numerical label that is used to identify a network interface of a computer or other network node participating in an IPv6-enabled computer network. IP addresses serve the purpose of uniquely identifying the individual network interface(s) of a host, locating it on the network, and thus permitting the routing of IP packets between hosts. For routing, IP addresses are present in fields of the packet header where they indicate source and destination of the packet. IPv6 is the successor to the Internet's first addressing infrastructure, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). In contrast to IPv4, which defined an IP address as a 32-bit value, IPv6 addresses have a size of 128 bits. Therefore, IPv6 has a vastly enlarged address space compared to IPv4.

IPv6 address classes

IPv6 addresses are classified by the primary addressing and routing methodologies common in networking: unicast addressing, anycast addressing, and multicast addressing.[1] A unicast address identifies a single network interface. The Internet Protocol delivers packets sent to a unicast address to that specific interface. An anycast address is assigned to a group of interfaces, usually Decomposition of an IPv6 address into its binary belonging to different nodes. A packet sent to an anycast address is form. delivered to just one of the member interfaces, typically the nearest host, according to the routing protocols definition of distance. Anycast addresses cannot be identified easily, they have the same format of unicast addresses, and differ only by their presence in the network at multiple points. Almost any unicast address can be employed as an anycast address. A multicast address is also used by multiple hosts, which acquire the multicast address destination by participating in the multicast distribution protocol among the network routers. A packet that is sent to a multicast address is delivered to all interfaces that have joined the corresponding multicast group. IPv6 does not implement broadcast addressing. Broadcast's traditional role is subsumed by multicast addressing to the all-nodes link-local multicast group f 0 : 1 However, the use of the all-nodes group is not recommended, and most IPv6 protocols use a f2:. dedicated link-local multicast group to avoid disturbing every interface in the network.

Address formats
An IPv6 address consists of 128 bits.[1] Addresses are classified into various types for applications in the major addressing and routing methodologies: unicast, multicast, and anycast networking. In each of these, various address formats are recognized by logically dividing the 128 address bits into bit groups and establishing rules for associating the values of these bit groups with special addressing features.

Unicast and anycast address format

Unicast and anycast addresses are typically composed of two logical parts: a 64-bit network prefix used for routing, and a 64-bit interface identifier used to identify a host's network interface. General unicast address format (routing prefix size varies) 48 (or more) 16 (or fewer) 64 routing prefix subnet id interface identifier
1/13

bits field
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The network prefix (the routing prefix combined with the subnet id) is contained in the most significant 64 bits of the address. The size of the routing prefix may vary; a larger prefix size means a smaller subnet id size. The bits of the subnet id(entifier) field are available to the network administrator to define subnets within the given network. The 64-bit interface identifier is either automatically generated from the interface's MAC address using the modified EUI-64 format, obtained from a DHCPv6 server, automatically established randomly, or assigned manually. A link-local address is also based on the interface identifier, but uses a different format for the network prefix. Link-local address format bits 10 54 zeroes 64 interface identifier field prefix

The prefix field contains the binary value 1 1 1 1 1 . The 54 zeroes that follow make the total network prefix the same for all 11100 link-local addresses, rendering them non-routable.

Multicast address format

For more details on this topic, see Multicast address#IPv6 . Multicast addresses are formed according to several specific formatting rules, depending on the application. General multicast address format bits 8 4 4 112 group ID field prefix flg sc The prefix holds the binary value 1 1 1 1 for any multicast address. 1111 Currently, 3 of the 4 flag bits in the flg field are defined;[1] the most-significant flag bit is reserved for future use. Multicast address flags [2] Meaning when 0 reserved Without prefix information Well-known multicast address reserved Address based on network prefix Dynamically assigned multicast address

bit 8 9

flag reserved

Meaning when 1

R (Rendezvous)[3] Rendezvous point not embedded Rendezvous point embedded

10 P (Prefix)[4] 11 T (Transient)[1]

The 4-bit scope field (sc) is used to indicate where the address is valid and unique. There are special multicast addresses, like Solicited Node. Solicited-Node multicast address format 79 zeroes

bits

4 4

9 ones

24 unicast address

field prefix flg sc

The sc(ope) field holds the binary value 0 1 (link-local). Solicited-node multicast addresses are computed as a function of a 00 node's unicast or anycast addresses. A solicited-node multicast address is created by copying the last 24 bits of a unicast or anycast address to the last 24 bits of the multicast address. Unicast-prefix-based multicast address format[3][4] 8 64

bits

4 4

32
2/13

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field prefix flg sc res riid plen Link-scoped multicast addresses use a comparable format.[5]

network prefix

group ID

Presentation
An IPv6 address is represented as eight groups of four hexadecimal digits, each group representing 16 bits (two octets). The groups are separated by colons (: An example of an IPv6 address is: ).
20:d88a:0000:ae07:34 010b:5300:0082:3073

The hexadecimal digits are case-insensitive when used, but should be represented in lower case.[6] The full representation of eight 4-digit groups may be simplified by several techniques, eliminating parts of the representation. Leading zeroes Leading zeroes in a group may be omitted, but each group must contain at least one hexadecimal digit.[1] Thus, the example address may be written as:
20:b:530082:7:34 01d88a:::ae3073

Groups of zeroes One or more consecutive groups of zero value may be replaced with a single empty group using two consecutive colons (: ).[1] : Substitution may only be applied once in an address, because multiple occurrences would create an ambiguous representation. If more than one such substitution could be applied, the substitution that replaces the most groups should be used; if the number of groups are equal then the leftmost substitution should be used.[6] With these rules, the example address is further simplified:
20:b:53:ae3073 01d88a:82:7:34

The localhost (loopback) address, 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 and the IPv6 unspecified address, 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 are reduced to : 1 :::::::, :::::::, : and : , respectively. : Dotted-quad notation During the transition of the Internet from IPv4 to the IPv6 it is typical to operate in a mixed addressing environment, and for this purpose a special notation has been introduced to express IPv4-mapped and IPv4-compatible IPv6 addresses by writing the final 32 bits of an address in the familiar IPv4 dotted-quad notation. For example, the IPv4-mapped IPv6 address : f f : 0 0 2 0 :ffc0:8 is usually written as : f f : 9 . . . 2 , thus expressing clearly the original IPv4 address that was mapped to IPv6. :ff120218

Networks
An IPv6 network uses an address block that is a contiguous group of IPv6 addresses of a size that is a power of two. The leading set of bits of the addresses are identical for all hosts in a given network, and are called the network's address or routing prefix. Network address ranges are written in CIDR notation. A network is denoted by the first address in the block (ending in all zeroes), a slash (/ and a decimal value equal to the size in bits of the prefix. For example, the network written as 2 0 : b : 2 4 : 4 ), 01d813:/8 starts at address 2 0 : b : 2 4 0 0 : 0 0 0 0 : 0 0 0 0 and ends at 01d813:0000:0000:00 20:b:24ff:ffff:ffff. 01d813:ffff:ffff:ff The routing prefix of an interface address may be directly indicated with the address by CIDR notation. For example, the configuration of an interface with address 2 0 : b : : 1 3connected to subnet 2 0 : b : : / 4is written as 01d8a:2 01d8a:6 20:b::136. 01d8a:2/4
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Address block sizes

Main article: CIDR notation The size of a block of addresses is specified by writing a slash (/ followed by a number in decimal whose value is the length of the ) network prefix in bits, rather than by explicitly specifying which addresses are in the block. For example, an address block with 48 bits in the prefix is indicated by / 8 Such a block contains 2128 48 = 280 addresses. The smaller the value of the network prefix, 4. the larger the block: a / 1block is 8 times larger than a / 4block. 2 2

Literal IPv6 addresses in network resource identifiers

Colon (: characters in IPv6 addresses may conflict with the established syntax of resource identifiers, such as URIs and URLs. ) The colon has traditionally been used to terminate the host path before a port number.[7] To alleviate this conflict, literal IPv6 addresses are enclosed in square brackets in such resource identifiers, for example:
ht:/20:b:538311:ae3074] tp/[01d88a:d:3982:7:38/

When the URL also contains a port number the notation is:
hts/[01d88a:d:3982:7:38:4/ tp:/20:b:538311:ae3074]43

Literal IPv6 addresses in UNC path names

In Microsoft Windows operating systems, IPv4 addresses are valid location identifiers in Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) path names. However, the colon is an illegal character in a UNC path name. Thus, the use of IPv6 addresses is also illegal in UNC names. For this reason, Microsoft implemented a transcription algorithm to represent an IPv6 address in the form of a domain name that can be used in UNC paths. For this purpose, Microsoft registered and reserved the second-level domain ipv6-literal.net on the Internet. IPv6 addresses are transcribed as a hostname or subdomain name within this name space, in the following fashion:
20:b:538311:ae3074 01d88a:d:3982:7:38

is written as
20-b-538311-ae3074.p6ltrlnt 01d88a-d-3982-7-38iv-iea.e

This notation is automatically resolved by Microsoft software without any queries to DNS name servers. If the IPv6 address contains a zone index, it is appended to the address portion after an 's' character:
f8-14iv-iea.e e0-s.p6ltrlnt

IPv6 address scopes

Every IPv6 address, except the unspecified address (: ), has a "scope",[8] which specifies in which part of the network it is valid. : In the unicast addressing class, link-local addresses and the loopback address have link-local scope, which means they are to be used in the directly attached network (link). All other addresses (except Unique local addresses) have global (or universal) scope, which means they are globally routable, and can be used to connect to addresses with global scope anywhere, or addresses with link-local scope on the directly attached network. Unique local addresses are not globally routable, so their scope is limited to the extent of the network(s) in which they are used. These addresses will only be routed by routers or tunnels whose routing tables have been specifically configured to allow it. The scope of an anycast address is defined identically to that of a unicast address. For multicasting, the four least-significant bits of the second address octet of a multicast address (f 0 : ) identify the address fs: [1] are: scope, i.e. the span over which the multicast address is propagated. Currently defined scopes
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Scope values Value

00 x 01 x 02 x 04 x 05 x 08 x 0e x 0f x

Scope name reserved interfacelocal link-local admin-local site-local

Notes

Interface-local scope spans only a single interface on a node, and is useful only for loopback transmission of multicast. Link-local and site-local multicast scopes span the same topological regions as the corresponding unicast scopes. Admin-local scope is the smallest scope that must be administratively configured, i.e., not automatically derived from physical connectivity or other, non- multicast-related configuration. Link-local and site-local multicast scopes span the same topological regions as the corresponding unicast scopes.

organizationOrganization-local scope is intended to span multiple sites belonging to a single organization. local global reserved

IPv6 address space

General allocation
The management of IPv6 address allocation process is delegated to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)[9] by the Internet Architecture Board and the Internet Engineering Steering Group. Its main function is the assignment of large address blocks to the regional Internet registries (RIRs), which have the delegated task of allocation to network service providers and other local registries. The IANA has maintained the official list of allocations of the IPv6 address space since December 1995.[10] Only one eighth of the total address space is currently allocated for use on the Internet, 2 0 : / , in order to provide efficient 00:3 route aggregation, thereby reducing the size of the Internet routing tables; the rest of the IPv6 address space is reserved for future use or for special purposes. The address space is assigned to the RIRs in large blocks of / 3up to / 2[11] 2 1. The RIRs assign smaller blocks to Local Internet registries that distributes them to users. These are typically in sizes from / 9to 1 [12][13][14] The addresses are typically distributed in / 8to / 6sized blocks to the end users.[15] /2 3. 4 5 Global unicast assignment records can be found at the various RIRs or other websites.[16] IPv6 addresses are assigned to organizations in much larger blocks as compared to IPv4 address assignmentsthe recommended allocation is a / 8block which contains 280 addresses, being 248 or about 2.8 1014 times larger than the entire IPv4 address 4 32 addresses and about 7.2 1016 times larger than the / blocks of IPv4 addresses, which are the largest allocations of space of 2 8 IPv4 addresses. The total pool, however, is sufficient for the foreseeable future, because there are 2128 or about 3.4 1038 (340 trillion trillion trillion) unique IPv6 addresses. Each RIR can divide each of its multiple / 3blocks into 512 / 2blocks, typically one for each ISP; an ISP can divide its / 2 2 3 3 [17] customers can create 65 536 / 4networks from their assigned block into 65 536 / 8blocks, typically one for each customer; 4 6 64 addresses. In contrast, the entire IPv4 address space has only 232 (about 4.3 109) addresses. / 8block, each having 2 4 By design, only a very small fraction of the address space will actually be used. The large address space ensures that addresses are almost always available, which makes the use of network address translation (NAT) for the purposes of address conservation almost unnecessary. NAT has been increasingly used for IPv4 networks to help alleviate IPv4 address exhaustion.
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Special allocation
To allow for provider changes without renumbering, Provider-independent address space assigned directly to the end user by the RIRs is taken from the special range 2 0 : 7 : / 9 0168:2. Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are assigned special addresses from the range 2 0 : f : / 9for communication with their 0178:2 [18] Root name servers have been assigned addresses from the same range. connected ISPs.

Reserved anycast addresses

The lowest address within each subnet prefix (the interface identifier set to all zeroes) is reserved as the "subnet-router" anycast address.[1] Applications may use this address when talking to any one of the available routers, as packets sent to this address are delivered to just one router. The 128 highest addresses within each / 4subnet prefix are reserved to be used as anycast addresses.[19] These addresses usually 6 have the 57 first bits of the interface identifier set to 1 followed by the 7-bit anycast ID. Prefixes for the network, including subnets, , are required to have a length of 64 bits, in which case the universal/local bit must be set to 0to indicate the address is not globally unique. The address with value 0 7 in the 7 least-significant bits is defined as a mobile IPv6 home agents anycast address. The xe address with value 0 7 (all bits 1 is reserved and may not be used. No more assignments from this range are made, so values xf ) 0 0 through 0 7 are reserved as well. x0 xd

Special addresses
There are a number of addresses with special meaning in IPv6:[20]

Unicast Addresses
Unspecified address
:/2 :18

The address with all zero bits is called the unspecified address (corresponding to 0 0 0 0 3 in IPv4). .../2 This address must never be assigned to an interface and is to be used only in software before the application has learned its host's source address appropriate for a pending connection. Routers must not forward packets with the unspecified address. Applications may be listening on one or more specific interfaces for incoming connections, which are shown in listings of active internet connections by a specific IP address (and a port number, separated by a colon). When the unspecified address is shown it means that an application is listening for incoming connections on all available interfaces. Default route
:/ :0

The default unicast route address (corresponding to 0 0 0 0 0in IPv4). .../

Local addresses
: 1 1 8 :/2

The loopback address is a unicast localhost address. If an application in a host sends packets to this address, the IPv6 stack will loop these packets back on the same virtual interface (corresponding to 1 7 0 0 0 8in IPv4). 2.../ f 8 : / 0 Addresses in the link-local prefix are only valid and unique on a single link. Within this prefix only one subnet e0:1 is allocated (54 zero bits), yielding an effective format of f 8 : / 4 The least significant 64 bits are usually chosen as the e0:6. interface hardware address constructed in modified EUI-64 format. A link-local address is required on every IPv6-enabled interfacein other words, applications may rely on the existence of a link-local address even when there is no IPv6 routing. These addresses are comparable to the auto-configuration addresses 1 9 2 4 0 0 1 of IPv4. 6.5../6 Unique local addresses Main article: Unique local address
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f0:/ c0:7

Unique local addresses (ULAs) are intended for local communication. They are routable only within a set of cooperating sites (analogous to the private address ranges 1 . . . / , 1 2 1 . . / 2 and 1 2 1 8 0 0 1 of 00008 7.6001, 9.6../6 [21] The addresses include a 40-bit pseudorandom number in the routing prefix intended to minimize the risk of IPv4). conflicts if sites merge or packets are misrouted into the Internet. Transition from IPv4 Main article: IPv6 transition mechanisms
: f f : : / 6 :ff009

This prefix designated an IPv4-mapped IPv6 address. With a few exceptions, this address type allows the transparent use of the Transport Layer protocols over IPv4 through the IPv6 networking application programming interface. Server applications only need to open a single listening socket to handle connections from clients using IPv6 or IPv4 protocols. IPv6 clients will be handled natively by default, and IPv4 clients appear as IPv6 clients at their IPv4-mapped IPv6 address. Transmission is handled similarly; established sockets may be used to transmit IPv4 or IPv6 datagram, based on the binding to an IPv6 address, or an IPv4-mapped address. (See also Transition mechanisms.) : f f : : : / 6 A prefix used for IPv4-translated addresses which are used by the Stateless IP/ICMP Translation :ff0009 (SIIT) protocol. 6 : f b : 9 The "Well-Known" Prefix. Addresses with this prefix are used for automatic IPv4/IPv6 translation.[22] 4f9:/6 Main article: 6to4
2 0 : / 6 02:1

This prefix is used for 6to4 addressing. Here, an address from the IPv4 network 1 2 8 . 9 0 2 is also 9.89./4

used. Special-purpose addresses[23] IANA has reserved a so-called 'Sub-TLA ID' address block for special assignments[24] which consists of 64 network prefixes in the range 2 0 : 0 0 : 2 through 2 0 : 1 8 : 2 . Three assignments from this block have been made: 0100:/9 010f:/9 Main article: Teredo tunneling
2 0 : / 2 01:3

Used for Teredo tunneling (which also falls into the category of IPv6 transition mechanisms). 2 0 : : / 8 Assigned to the Benchmarking Methodology Working Group (BMWG)[25] for benchmarking IPv6 012:4 (corresponding to 1 8 1 . . / 5for benchmarking IPv4). 9.8001 2 0 : 0 : 2 ORCHID (Overlay Routable Cryptographic Hash Identifiers).[26] These are non-routed IPv6 addresses 011:/8 used for Cryptographic Hash Identifiers. Documentation This prefix is used in documentation.[27] The addresses should be used anywhere an example IPv6 address is given or model networking scenarios are described (corresponding to 1 2 0 2 0 2 , 1 8 5 . 0 . / 4 and 9.../4 9.11002, 2 3 0 1 3 0 2 in IPv4.)[28] 0..1./4
2 0 : b : / 2 01d8:3

Deprecated and obsolete addresses Further information: Historical notes

Multicast addresses
The multicast addresses f 0 : 0 8are reserved[1] and should not be assigned to any multicast group. The Internet Assigned f0:/ Numbers Authority (IANA) manages address reservations.[29] Some common IPv6 multicast addresses are the following:
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Address

Description

Available Scopes Available in scope 1 (interface-local) and 2 (link-local):

f0:1 fX:

All nodes address, identify the group of all IPv6 nodes

f 0 : 1 f1:

All nodes in the interfaceAll nodes in the link-local

local
f 0 : 1 f2:

Available in scope 1 (interface-local), 2 (linklocal) and 5 (site-local):

f0:2 fX:

All routers

f 0 : 2 f1:

All routers in the interfaceAll routers in the link-local All routers in the site-local

local
f 0 : 2 f2: f 0 : 2 f5: f0:5 f2: f0:6 f2: f0:9 f2: f0:a f2: f0:d f2: f0:f fX:b f0:11 fX:0 f0:11 f2:: f0:12 f2:: f0:13 f2:: f0:13 f5::

OSPFIGP OSPFIGP Designated Routers RIP Routers EIGRP Routers All PIM Routers mDNSv6 All Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers Link Name All-dhcp-agents Link-local Multicast Name Resolution All-dhcp-servers See below

2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) Available in all scopes Available in all scopes 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local) 5 (site-local) 2 (link-local) 2 (link-local)

f 0 : 1 f 0 : / 0 Solicited-node multicast address. f2::f0014 f 0 : 2 f 0 : / 0 Node Information Queries f2::f0014

Solicited-node multicast address The least significant 24 bits of the Solicited-node multicast address group ID are filled with the least significant 24 bits of the interface's unicast or anycast address. These addresses allow link-layer address resolution via Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) on the link without disturbing all nodes on the local network. A host is required to join a Solicited-Node multicast group for each of its configured unicast or anycast addresses.

Stateless address autoconfiguration

On system startup, a node automatically creates a link-local address on each IPv6-enabled interface, even if globally routable addresses are manually configured or obtained through "configuration protocols" (see below). It does so independently and without any prior configuration by stateless address autoconfiguration (SLAAC),[30] using a component of the Neighbor Discovery Protocol. This address is selected with the prefix f 8 : / 4 e0:6. In IPv4, typical "configuration protocols" include DHCP or PPP. Although DHCPv6 exists, IPv6 hosts normally use the Neighbor Discovery Protocol to create a globally routable unicast address: the host sends router solicitation requests and an IPv6 router
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responds with a prefix assignment.[31] The lower 64 bits of these addresses are populated with a 64-bit interface identifier in modified EUI-64 format. This identifier is usually shared by all automatically configured addresses of that interface, which has the advantage that only one multicast group needs to be joined for neighbor discovery. For this, a multicast address is used, formed from the network prefix f 0 : 1 f 0 : / 0 and the 24 least significant bits of the address. f2::f0014

Modified EUI-64
A 64-bit interface identifier is most commonly derived from its 48-bit MAC address. A MAC address 0 : D B : 6 3 : 4is 01:A0:76 turned into a 64-bit EUI-64 by inserting F : Ein the middle: 0 : D B : F F : 6 3 : 4 When this EUI-64 is used to form an FF 01:AF:E0:76. [1] the meaning of the Universal/Local bit (the 7th most significant bit of the EUI-64, starting from 1) is IPv6 address it is modified: inverted, so that a 1now means Universal. To create an IPv6 address with the network prefix 2 0 : b : : : / 4it yields the 01d812:6 address 2 0 : b : : : 2 d b f : e 6 3 6 (with the underlined U/L bit inverted to a 1 because the MAC address is 01d81201:aff0:74 , universally unique). The reason for modifying the U/L bit is that when using manually assigned addresses on an interface it means you can simply assign the address 2 0 : b : : : 1 6 instead of the less appealing and counter-intuitive 2 0 : b : : : 2 0 : / 4 When 01d812:/4 01d81200:16. manually assigning link-local addresses, you can assign the short address f 8 : 1instead of the long f 8 : : 2 0 0 0 1or e0: e0:00::: f8::::20:. e000000:1

Duplicate address detection

The assignment of a unicast IPv6 address to an interface involves an internal test for the uniqueness of that address using Neighbor Solicitation and Neighbor Advertisement (ICMPv6 type 135 and 136) messages. While in the process of establishing uniqueness an address has a tentative state. The node joins the solicited-node multicast address for the tentative address (if not already done so) and sends neighbor solicitations, with the tentative address as target address and the unspecified address (: / 2 ) as source address. The node also :18 joins the all-hosts multicast address f 0 : 1 so it will be able to receive Neighbor Advertisements. f2:, If a node receives a neighbor solicitation with its own tentative address as the target address, then that address is not unique. The same is true if the node receives a neighbor advertisement with the tentative address as the source of the advertisement. Only after having successfully established that an address is unique may it be assigned and used by an interface.

Address lifetime
Each IPv6 address that is bound to an interface has a fixed lifetime. Lifetimes are infinite, unless configured to a shorter period. There are two lifetimes that govern the state of an address: the preferred lifetime and the valid lifetime.[32] Lifetimes can be configured in routers that provide the values used for autoconfiguration, or specified when manually configuring addresses on interfaces. When an address is assigned to an interface it gets the status "preferred", which it holds during its preferred-lifetime. After that lifetime expires the status becomes "deprecated" and no new connections should be made using this address. The address becomes "invalid" after its valid-lifetime also expires; the address is removed from the interface and may be assigned somewhere else on the Internet.

Temporary addresses
The globally unique and static MAC addresses, used by stateless address autoconfiguration to create interface identifiers, offer an opportunity to track user equipmentacross time and IPv6 network prefix changesand so users.[33] To reduce the prospect of a user identity being permanently tied to an IPv6 address portion, a node may create temporary addresses with interface identifiers based on time-varying random bit strings[34] and relatively short lifetimes (hours to days), after which they are replaced with new
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addresses. Temporary addresses may be used as source address for originating connections, while external hosts use a public address by querying the Domain Name System. Network interfaces configured for IPv6 in Windows Vista and Windows 2008 Server or later Microsoft systems use temporary addresses by default.

Default address selection

IPv6-enabled network interfaces usually have more than one IPv6 address, for example, a link-local and a global address, and permanent versus temporary addresses. IPv6 introduces the concepts of address scope and selection preference, yielding multiple choices for source and destination address selections in communication with another host. The preference selection algorithm,[35] which selects the most appropriate address to use in communications with a particular destination (including the use of IPv4-mapped addresses in dual-stack implementations), is based on a user-customizable preference table that associates each routing prefix with a precedence level. The default table is as follows:[35] Default Prefix Policy Table Prefix Precedence Label
:118 :/2 :/ :0 20:/6 02:1 :/6 :9 :ff::/6 :ff009

50 40 30 20 10

0 1 2 3 4

The default configuration places preference on IPv6, rather than IPv4, and on destination addresses within the smallest possible scope, so that link-local communication is preferred over globally routed paths when otherwise equally suitable. The prefix policy table is similar to a routing table, with the precedence value serving as the role of a link cost, where higher preference is expressed as a larger value. Source addresses are preferred to have the same label value as the destination address. Addresses are matched to prefixes based on the longest matching most-significant bit-sequence. Candidate source addresses are obtained from the operating system and candidate destination addresses may be queried via the Domain Name System (DNS).

Link-local addresses and zone indices

Because all link-local addresses in a host have a common prefix, normal routing procedures cannot be used to choose the outgoing interface when sending packets to a link-local destination. A special identifier, known as a zone index,[8] is needed to provide the additional routing information; in the case of link-local addresses, zone indices correspond to interface identifiers. When an address is written textually, the zone index is appended to the address, separated by a percent sign (% The actual syntax ). of zone indices depends on the operating system: the Microsoft Windows IPv6 stack uses numeric zone indexes, e.g., f 8 : 3 1 The index is determined by the interface e0:%. number; most Unix-like systems (e.g., BSD, Linux, Mac OS X) use the interface name as a zone index: f 8 : 3 e h . e0:%t0 Zone index notations cause syntax conflicts when used in Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI), as the '%' character also designates percent-encoding.[36]

IPv6 addresses in the Domain Name System

In the Domain Name System hostnames are mapped to IPv6 addresses by AAAA resource records, so-called quad-A records. For reverse lookup the IETF reserved the domain i 6 a p , where the name space is hierarchically divided by the 1-digit p.ra
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hexadecimal representation of nibble units (4 bits) of the IPv6 address. This scheme is defined in RFC 3596. As in IPv4, each host is represented in the DNS by two DNS records, an address record and a reverse mapping pointer record. For example, a host computer named derrick in zone example.com has the Unique Local Address f d : c 1 2 : : 1 . Its da5c:34:f quad-A address record is
drikeapecm erc.xml.o. I N AA AA fd:c12::1 da5c:34:f

and its IPv6 pointer record is

f100000000000000400032001cc5addfi6ap. I ................................p.ra N PR T drikeapecm erc.xml.o.

This pointer record may be defined in a number of zones, depending on the chain of delegation of authority in the zone d.f.ip6.arpa. The DNS protocol is independent of its Transport Layer protocol. Queries and replies may be transmitted over IPv6 or IPv4 transports regardless of the address family of the data requested. AAAA record fields NAME TYPE CLASS TTL RDATA Domain name AAAA (28) Internet (1) Time to live in seconds String form of the IPV6 address[1]

RDLENGTH Length of RDATA field

Transition challenges
As of 2009, many DNS resolvers in home-networking NAT devices and routers still handle AAAA records improperly.[37] Some of these simply drop DNS requests for such records, instead of properly returning the appropriate negative DNS response. Because the request is dropped, the host sending the request has to wait for a timeout to trigger. This often causes a perceived slow down when connecting to IPv6 hosts.

Historical notes
Deprecated and obsolete addresses
The site-local prefix f c : / 0specifies that the address is valid only within the site network of an organization. It was part e0:1 of the original addressing architecture[38] in December 1995, but its use was deprecated in September 2004[39] because the definition of the term site was ambiguous, which led to confusing routing rules. New networks must not support this special type of address. In October 2005, a new specification[40] replaced this address type with unique local addresses. The address block 0 0 : / was defined as an OSI NSAP-mapped prefix set in August 1996,[41][42] but was deprecated 20:7 [43] in December 2004. The 96-bit zero-value prefix : / 6 originally known as IPv4-compatible addresses, was mentioned in 1995[38] but first :9, [44] This class of addresses was used to represent IPv4 addresses within an IPv6 transition technology. described in 1998. Such an IPv6 address has its first (most significant) 96 bits set to zero, while its last 32 bits are the IPv4 address that is represented. In February 2006, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has deprecated the use of IPv4-compatible addresses.[1] The only remaining use of this address format is to represent an IPv4 address in a table or database with fixed
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size members that must also be able to store an IPv6 address. Address block 3 f : / 6was allocated for test purposes for the 6bone network in December 1998.[44] Prior to that, the fe:1 address block 5 0 : / was used for this purpose. Both address blocks were returned to the address pool in June F0:8 2006.[45]

Miscellany
IPv6 addresses were originally registered in the Domain name system (DNS) in the i 6zone under the i ttop-level domain p n for reverse lookups. In 2000, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) reverted their intentions to retire a p , and decided in ra 2001 that the a p top-level domain should retain its original function. Domains in ip6.int should be moved to i 6 a p .[46] ra p.ra The i 6 i tzone was officially removed on 6 June 2006. p.n In March 2011, the IETF refined their recommendations for allocation of address blocks to end sites.[15] Instead of assigning either a / 8 / 4 or / 2 (according to IAB's and IESG's views of 2001),[47] Internet service providers should consider 4, 6, 18 assigning smaller blocks (for example a / 6 to end users. The ARIN, RIPE & APNIC regional registries' policies 5) encourage / 6assignments where appropriate.[15] 5

References
1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l RFC 4291, IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture, R. Hinden, S. Deering (February 2006) 2. ^ Silvia Hagen (May 2006). IPv6 Essentials (Second ed.). O'Reilly. ISBN 978-0596100582. 3. ^ a b RFC 3956, Embedding the Rendezvous Point (RP) Address in an IPv6 Multicast Address P. Savola, B. Haberman (November 2004) 4. ^ a b RFC 3306, Unicast-Prefix-based IPv6 Multicast Addresses, B. Haberman, D. Thaler (August 2002) 5. ^ RFC 4489, A Method for Generating Link-Scoped IPv6 Multicast Addresses, J-S. Park, M-K. Shin; H-J. Kim (April 2006) 6. ^ a b RFC 5952, "A Recommendation for IPv6 Address Text Representation", S. Kawamura, M. Kawashima, (August 2010) 7. ^ RFC 3986, Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax, T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter (January 2005) 8. ^ a b RFC 4007, IPv6 Scoped Address Architecture, S.Deering, B. Haberman, T. Jinmei, E. Nordmark, B. Zill (March 2005) 9. ^ RFC 1881, IPv6 Address Allocation Management, Internet Architecture Board (December 1995) 10. ^ IPv6 address space at IANA (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space) . Iana.org (2010-10-29). Retrieved on 201109-28. 11. ^ IPv6 unicast address assignments (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-unicast-address-assignments/ipv6-unicast-addressassignments.xhtml) , IANA 12. ^ DE-TELEKOM-20050113 (http://www.db.ripe.net/whois?form_type=simple&full_query_string=&searchtext=DE-TELEKOM20050113&do_search=Search) . Db.ripe.net. Retrieved on 2011-09-28. 13. ^ "ARIN Number Resource Policy Manual: Initial allocation to ISPs" (https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four22) . https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#four22. 14. ^ "RIPE NCC IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy: Minimum allocation" (http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe481#minimum_allocation) . http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-481#minimum_allocation. 15. ^ a b c RFC 6177, IPv6 Address Assignment to End Sites, T. Narten, G. Houston, L. Roberts, IETF Trust,(March 2011). 16. ^ for example (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-unicast-address-assignments/ipv6-unicast-address-assignments.xml) . Iana.org. Retrieved on 2011-09-28. 17. ^ "IPv6 Addressing Plans" (http://www.getipv6.info/index.php?title=IPv6_Addressing_Plans&oldid=2998) . ARIN IPv6 Wiki. http://www.getipv6.info/index.php?title=IPv6_Addressing_Plans&oldid=2998. Retrieved 2010-08-18. "All customers get one /48 unless they can show that they need more than 65k subnets. [...] If you have lots of consumer customers you may want to assign /56s to private residence sites." 18. ^ "Address Space Managed by the RIPE NCC" (https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-510) . https://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-510. Retrieved 2011-05-22. 19. ^ RFC 2526,Reserved IPv6 Subnet Anycast Addresses, D. Johnson, S. Deering (March 1999) 20. ^ RFC 5156, Special-Use IPv6 Addresses, M. Blanchett (April 2008) 21. ^ RFC 1918, Address Allocation for Private Internets, Y. Rekhter, B. Moskowitz, D. Karrenberg, G.J. De Groot, E. Lear (February 1996) 22. ^ RFC 6052, "IPv6 Addressing of IPv4/IPv6 Translators", C. Bao, C. Huitema, M. Bagnulo, M. Boucadair, X. Li, (October 2010) 23. ^ RFC 4773, Administration of the IANA Special Purpose IPv6 Address Block, G. Huston (December 2006)

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23. ^ RFC 4773, Administration of the IANA Special Purpose IPv6 Address Block, G. Huston (December 2006) 24. ^ RFC 2928, Initial IPv6 Sub-TLA ID Assignments, R. Hinden, S. Deering, R. Fink, T. Hain (September 2000) The Internet Society 25. ^ RFC 5180, IPv6 Benchmarking Methodology for Network Interconnect Devices, C. Popoviciu, A. Hamza, G. Van de Velde, D. Dugatkin (May 2008) 26. ^ RFC 4843 (experimental), An IPv6 Prefix for Overlay Routable Cryptographic Hash Identifiers (ORCHID), P. Nikander, J. Laganier, F. Dupont (April 2007) 27. ^ RFC 3849, IPv6 Address Prefix Reserved for Documentation, G. Huston, A. Lord, P. Smith (July 2004) 28. ^ RFC 5737, IPv4 Address Blocks Reserved for Documentation, J. Arkko, M. Cotton, L. Vegoda (January 2010), ISSN: 2070-1721 29. ^ IANA Internet Protocol Version 6 Multicast Addresses (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-multicast-addresses) . 30. ^ RFC 4862, IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration, S. Thomson, T. Narten, T. Jinmei (September 2007) 31. ^ RFC 4861, Neighbor Discovery for IP version 6 (IPv6), T. Narten, E. Nordmark, W. Simpson, H. Holiman (September 2007) 32. ^ Iljitsch van Beijnum (2006). "IPv6 Internals" (http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_93/ipv6_internals.html) . The Internet Protocol Journal 9 (3): pp. 1629. http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_9-3/ipv6_internals.html. 33. ^ The privacy implications of stateless IPv6 addressing (http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm? id=1852723&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=103687796&CFTOKEN=17254293) . Portal.acm.org (2010-04-21). Retrieved on 2011-09-28. 34. ^ RFC 4941, Privacy Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration in IPv6, T. Narten, R. Draves, S. Krishnan (September 2007) 35. ^ a b RFC 3484, Default Address Selection for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), R. Draves, The Internet Society (February 2003) 36. ^ Formats for IPv6 Scope Zone Identifiers in Literal Address Formats (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-fenner-literal-zone-02) . Tools.ietf.org. Retrieved on 2011-09-28. 37. ^ RFC 4074 Common Misbehavior Against DNS Queries for IPv6 Addresses, Y. Morishita, T. Jinmei. May 2005. 38. ^ a b RFC 1884, IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture, R. Hinden, S. Deering (December 1995) 39. ^ RFC 3879, Deprecating Site Local Addresses, C. Huitema, B. Carpenter (September 2004) 40. ^ RFC 4193, Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses, R. Hinden, B. Haberman (October 2005) 41. ^ RFC 4147, Proposed Changes to the Format of the IANA IPv6 Registry, G. Houston (August 2005) 42. ^ RFC 1888, OSI NSAPs and IPv6, J. Bound, B. Carpenter, D. Harrington, J. Houldsworth, A. Lloyd (August 1996) 43. ^ RFC 4048, RFC 1888 Is Obsolete, B. Carpenter (April 2005) 44. ^ a b RFC 2471, IPv6 Testing Address Allocation, R. Hinden, R. Fink, J. Postel (December 1998) 45. ^ RFC 3701, 6bone (IPv6 Testing Address Allocation) Phaseout, R. Fink, R. Hinden (March 2004) 46. ^ RFC 3152, Delegation of IP6.ARPA, R. Bush (August 2001) 47. ^ RFC 3177, "IAB/IESG Recommendations on IPv6 Address Allocations to Sites", IAB, IESG, (September 2001).

IPv6 address - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

External links
IP Version 6 multicast addresses (http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-multicast-addresses) Beijnum, van, Iljitsch (2005). Running IPv6. ISBN 1-59059-527-0. Elz, Robert (1996-04-01). [RFC 1924 "A Compact Representation of IPv6 Addresses"]. IETF. RFC 1924. "Represent any IPv6 address in 20 octets." This humorous RFC specifies an alternative way of representing IPv6 addresses, using a base-85 encoding. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IPv6_address&oldid=487958021" Categories: IPv6 Network addressing This page was last modified on 18 April 2012 at 05:54. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

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