IPv6 Adressing

In this section, we examine:

The IPv6 Address Space The most obvious distinguishing feature of IPv6 is its use of much larger addresses. The size of an address in IPv6 is 128 bits, which is four times the larger than an IPv4 address. A 32-bit address space allows for 232 or 4,294,967,296 possible addresses. A 128-bit address space allows for 2128 or 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 (or 3.4 38 or 340 10 undecillion) possible addresses. In the late 1970s when the IPv4 address space was designed, it was unimaginable that it could be exhausted. However, due to changes in technology and an allocation practice that did not anticipate the recent explosion of hosts on the Internet, the IPv4 address space was consumed to the point that by 1992 it was clear a replacement would be necessary. With IPv6, it is even harder to conceive that the IPv6 address space will be consumed. To help put this number in perspective, a 128-bit address space provides 655,570,793,348,866,943,898,599 (6.51023) addresses for every square meter of the Earths surface. It is important to remember that the decision to make the IPv6 address 128 bits in length was not so that every square meter of the Earth could have 6.51023 addresses. Rather, the relatively large size of the IPv6 address is designed to be subdivided into hierarchical routing domains that reflect the topology of the modern-day Internet. The use of 128 bits allows for multiple levels of hierarchy and flexibility in designing hierarchical addressing and routing that is currently lacking on the IPv4-based Internet.

The IPv6 addressing architecture is described in RFC 4291. IPv6 Address Syntax
IPv4 addresses are represented in dotted-decimal format. This 32-bit address is divided along 8-bit boundaries. Each set of 8 bits is converted to its decimal equivalent and separated by periods. For IPv6, the 128-bit address is divided along 16-bit boundaries, and each 16-bit block is converted to a 4-digit hexadecimal number and separated by colons. The resulting representation is called colon-hexadecimal. Compressing Zeros Some types of addresses contain long sequences of zeros. To further simplify the representation of IPv6 addresses, a contiguous sequence of 16-bit blocks set to 0 in the colon hexadecimal format can be compressed to ::, known as double-colon.

IPv6 Prefixes
The prefix is the part of the address that indicates the bits that have fixed values or are the bits of the subnet prefix. Prefixes for IPv6 subnets, routes, and address ranges are expressed in the same way as Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation for IPv4. An IPv6 prefix is written in address/prefixlength notation. For example, 21DA:D3::/48 and 21DA:D3:0:2F3B::/64 are IPv6 address prefixes.

Types of IPv6 Addresses

1. Unicast A unicast address identifies a single interface within the scope of the type of unicast address. With the appropriate unicast routing topology, packets addressed to a unicast address are delivered to a single interface. 2. Multicast A multicast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate multicast routing topology, packets addressed to a multicast address are delivered to all interfaces that are identified by the address. A multicast address is used for one-to-many communication, with delivery to multiple interfaces. 3. Anycast An anycast address identifies multiple interfaces. With the appropriate routing topology, packets addressed to an anycast address are delivered to a single interface, the nearest interface that is identified by the address. The nearest interface is defined as being closest in terms of routing distance. An anycast address is used for one-to-one-of-many communication, with delivery to a single interface. In all cases, IPv6 addresses identify interfaces, not nodes. A node is identified by any unicast address assigned to one of its interfaces.

Unicast IPv6 Addresses The following types of addresses are unicast IPv6 addresses: Global unicast addresses Link-local addresses Site-local addresses Unique local IPv6 unicast addresses Special addresses

Multicast IPv6 Addresses In IPv6, multicast traffic operates in the same way that it does in IPv4. Arbitrarily located IPv6 nodes can listen for multicast traffic on an arbitrary IPv6 multicast address. IPv6 nodes can listen to multiple multicast addresses at the same time. Nodes can join or leave a multicast group at any time. IPv6 multicast addresses have the first eight bits set to 1111 1111. An IPv6 address is easy to classify as multicast because it always begins with FF. Multicast addresses cannot be used as source addresses or as intermediate destinations in a Routing extension header. Beyond the first eight bits, multicast addresses include additional structure to identify their flags, scope, and multicast group. Figure 10 shows the IPv6 multicast address.

Flags
Indicates flags set on the multicast address. The size of this field is 4 bits. The first low-order bit is the Transient (T) flag. When set to 0, the T flag indicates that the multicast address is a permanently assigned (well-known) multicast address allocated by IANA. When set to 1, the T flag indicates that the multicast address is a transient (non-permanently-assigned) multicast address. The second low-order bit is for the Prefix (P) flag, which indicates whether the multicast address is based on a unicast address prefix. RFC 3306 describes the P flag. The third low-order bit is for the Rendezvous Point Address (R) flag, which indicates whether the multicast address contains an embedded rendezvous point address. RFC 3956 describes the R flag.

Scope

Indicates the scope of the IPv6 internetwork for which the multicast traffic is intended. The size of this field is 4 bits. In addition to information provided by multicast routing protocols, routers use the multicast scope to determine whether multicast traffic can be forwarded. The most prevalent values for the Scope field are 1 (interface-local scope), 2 (link-local scope), and 5 (site-local scope).

Group ID
Identifies the multicast group and is unique within the scope. The size of this field is 112 bits. Permanently assigned group IDs are independent of the scope. Transient group IDs are only relevant to a specific scope. Multicast addresses from FF01:: through FF0F:: are reserved, wellknown addresses. Anycast IPv6 Addresses An anycast address is assigned to multiple interfaces. Packets addressed to an anycast address are forwarded by the routing infrastructure to the nearest interface to which the anycast address is assigned. In order to facilitate delivery, the routing infrastructure must be aware of the interfaces assigned anycast addresses and their distance in terms of routing metrics. At present, anycast addresses are only used as destination addresses and are only assigned to routers. Anycast addresses are assigned out of the unicast address space and the scope of an anycast address is the scope of the type of unicast address from which the anycast address is assigned. The Subnet-Router anycast address is predefined and required. It is created from the subnet prefix for a given interface. To construct the Subnet-Router anycast address, the bits in the subnet prefix are fixed at their appropriate values and the remaining bits are set to 0. All router interfaces attached to a subnet are assigned the Subnet-Router anycast address for that subnet. The Subnet-Router anycast address is used for communication with one of multiple routers attached to a remote subnet. IPv6 Addresses for a Host An IPv4 host with a single network adapter typically has a single IPv4 address assigned to that adapter. An IPv6 host, however, usually has multiple IPv6 addresseseven with a single interface. An IPv6 host is assigned the following unicast addresses: A link-local address for each interface Unicast addresses for each interface (which could be a site-local address and one or multiple global unicast addresses) The loopback address (::1) for the loopback interface

IPv6 Addresses for a Router An IPv6 router is assigned the following unicast addresses:

A link-local address for each interface Unicast addresses for each interface (which could be a site-local address and one or multiple global unicast addresses) A Subnet-Router anycast address Additional anycast addresses (optional) The loopback address (::1) for the loopback interface

IPv6 Interface Identifiers The last 64 bits of an IPv6 address are the interface identifier that is unique to the 64-bit prefix of the IPv6 address. The following are the ways in which an IPv6 interface identifier is determined: A 64-bit interface identifier that is derived from the Extended Unique Identifier (EUI)-64 address.The 64-bit EUI-64 address is defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). EUI-64 addresses are either assigned to a network adapter or derived from IEEE 802 addresses. This is the default behavior for IPv6 in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.