Hi,
Could anyone help me understand the logic behind selecting 20 bit flow label field in
the IPv6 header?
IPv4 uses the src and dest addr and ports to denote a flow. Ofcourse not necessarily
every 4 tuple should map to a flow, but if there was a 32 bit field, we could have
right away re-used the src+dest port fields to indicate the flow in IPv6 too.
Firewalls, proxies, L4 switches, QoS mechanisms at routers all need some informaiton
on the specific flow to make intelligent decisions. Most them today use transport
layer protocol Id and src and destination ports to identify the flow.
If we provide the src and dest port information in the network layer header itself,
these technologies need not violate the layering!
Also if the packets were encrypted as in IPSec, this becomes more so relevant.
May be I am missing some thing here. Would appreciate any clarfications.
Thanks and Regards
Narsi
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