Hi Jonathan,

OK, understood. I was looking in an IPv6 book which stated link local prefix as FE80::/64. RFC 4291 Section 2.5.6 also shows it as effectively FE80::/64. But I agree the language in RFC 4862 is consistent with hc-11.

Robert

Robert Cragie (Pacific Gas & Electric)

Gridmerge Ltd.
89 Greenfield Crescent,
Wakefield, WF4 4WA, UK
+44 1924 910888
+1 415 513 0064
http://www.gridmerge.com <http://www.gridmerge.com/>


On 02/09/2010 2:15 PM, Jonathan Hui wrote:
Hi Robert,

On Sep 2, 2010, at 2:21 AM, Robert Cragie wrote:

It's a minor point and the text is not specifically wrong in hc-11 but the 
following change would make things 100% consistent, in my view.

The link-local prefix is by definition FE80::/64. So the following:

10:  16 bits.  The first 112 bits of the address are elided.
             The value of the first 64 bits is the link-local prefix
             padded with zeros.  The following 64 bits are 0000:00ff:
             fe00:XXXX, where XXXX are the 16 bits carried in-line.

would look better as:

10:  16 bits.  The first 112 bits of the address are elided.
             The value of the first 64 bits is the link-local prefix.
             The following 64 bits are 0000:00ff:fe00:XXXX,
             where XXXX are the 16 bits carried in-line.

as the 'padded with zeros' seems to be a hangover from the previous text when 
it expanded it to a 112-bit prefix.
As defined in Section 2.4 of RFC4291, the link-local prefix is only 10 bits 
long:

       Address type         Binary prefix        IPv6 notation   Section
       ------------         -------------        -------------   -------
       Unspecified          00...0  (128 bits)   ::/128          2.5.2
       Loopback             00...1  (128 bits)   ::1/128         2.5.3
       Multicast            11111111             FF00::/8        2.7
       Link-Local unicast   1111111010           FE80::/10       2.5.6

RFC4862 has similar wording in forming a link-local address:

    1.  The left-most 'prefix length' bits of the address are those of
        the link-local prefix.

    2.  The bits in the address to the right of the link-local prefix are
        set to all zeroes.

    3.  If the length of the interface identifier is N bits, the right-
        most N bits of the address are replaced by the interface
        identifier.

So the 'padded with zeros' text isn't a mistake, the well-known link-local prefix needs 
to be "expanded" from 10 to 64 bits.

--
Jonathan Hui


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