On Oct 27, 2010, at 14:56, Anders Brandt wrote:

> Is the NS+ARO message sent with multicast when I do registration the first 
> time?

One of the problems with specifying 6LoWPAN-ND as a delta to 4861 is that it 
more than doubles the effective size of the spec (6LoWPAN-ND is 59 pages, 4861 
is 97 pages).  4861 says:

4.3.  Neighbor Solicitation Message Format

... Neighbor Solicitations are multicast when the node needs
   to resolve an address and unicast when the node seeks to verify the
   reachability of a neighbor.

Well, we don't need to resolve an address, so it should be unicast.

I think the general rule is:

-- Hosts only ever multicast RS (link-local, which is just radio-range for 
Route-Over!)
-- Routers MAY multicast RAs, but generally unicast them
-- NS and NA (as well as DAR/DAC) are never multicast.

I think it couldn't hurt to say this succinctly somewhere.  
But the answer to your specific question is in there:

5.1.  Forbidden Actions

   A host would never multicast a Neighbor Solicitation message.

5.2.  Interface Initialization

   ...nobody multicasts Neighbor Solicitations in this type of network

See also section 3:
   The most important part of the optimizations is the evolved host-to-
   router interaction that allows for sleeping nodes and avoids using
   multicast Neighbor Discovery messages except for the case of a host
   finding an initial set of default routers, and redoing such
   determination when that set of routers have become unreachable.

But then there is some weird text in 6.5.5:

   Optionally Routers can use multicast Neighbor Solicitations as in
   [RFC4861] to resolve each others link-layer addresses.  Thus Routers
   MAY multicast Neighbor Solicitations for other routers, for example
   as a result of receiving some routing protocol update.  Routers MUST
   respond to multicast Neighbor Solicitations.  This implies that
   Routers MUST join the Solicited-node multicast addresses as specified
   in [RFC4861].

Rationale is not given and unknown to me; I don't think one should implement 
either of these MUSTs.

Gruesse, Carsten

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