On Oct 9, 2011, at 8:53 PM, Acee Lindem wrote:

> Correct, it uses the best or only configured IPv4 address in the context 
> (aka, virtual router). Of course, we'd want to use something else for true 
> auto-configuration. 

Yes. For my money, in the absence of an IPv4 configuration, that's probably 
derived from a MAC Address, a serial number, or something else that is an 
attribute of the bit of equipment. But apart from observing on possible 
sources, Jon Moy would probably put on an animated look and observe that the 
router id is a 32 bit number unique in the routing domain, not necessarily an 
address of any kind.

A tiny bit of history here. Back in 1991 when we were doing the testing that 
resulted in RFC 1246, we (the implementers of 23 different implementations, 
many of which were derivative from the Maryland Prototype, e.g. Rob Coltun's 
code) had a discussion about where the router id should come from, and I 
commented that I had doctored my implementation to select one of the IPv4 
addresses in the area. What I just described was the discussion that followed. 
Maybe everyone else had already made the same choice, or maybe they changed 
their code soon after, but using one of the IPv4 addresses in the area was 
suddenly a pretty common solution. :-)


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