Erik, You are correct of course in terms of the wire protocol. The issue is that people using heterogeneous systems will be confused by inconsistency between implementations.
Brian Erik Nordmark wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > RFC 2373 states that: > > "The unspecified address must not be used as the destination address > > of IPv6 packets or in IPv6 Routing Headers." > > > > However it seems that certain stacks are using this address in a different > > way. > > Yes, but I don't think there is an inherent conflict. > RFC 2373 specifies the behavior on the wire i.e. what is carried in > IPv6 packets. > Implementations might do various things at the API interface, but the > an implementation should ensure and :: doesn't appear as the destination in > the IPv6 packets it sends. > > > When '::' is the destination address: > > - some use the first available interface's address > > - some use the loopback address > > > > Is there a chance that one of these will become the acceptable norm? It > > would be interesting to know if the majority of implementations actually > > return an error for this case. > > I know that for Solaris we interpret :: at the API as the loopback > address. This was done to be consistent with the IPv4 Solaris code. > Unfortunately the introduction of the mechanism in the IPv4 Solaris code > was before my time. I don't think it existed in BSD 4.3tahoe but I haven't > checked. > > Erik -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPng Working Group Mailing List IPng Home Page: http://playground.sun.com/ipng FTP archive: ftp://playground.sun.com/pub/ipng Direct all administrative requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
