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The TCP/IP Guide  9  TCP/IP Lower-Layer (Interface, Internet and Transport) Protocols (OSI Layers 2, 3 and 4)       9  TCP/IP Internet Layer (OSI Network Layer) Protocols            9  TCP/IP IPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol (ND)

IPv6 ND Host-Router Discovery Functions: Router Discovery, Prefix Discovery, Parameter Discovery and Address Autoconfiguration 1 2 3 IPv6 ND Redirect Function

Neighbor Unreachability Detection and the Neighbor Cache

Neighbor Solicitation and Neighbor Advertisement messages are most often associated with address resolution, but also have other purposes. One of these is Neighbor Unreachability Detection. Each device maintains information about each of its neighbors and updates it dynamically as network conditions change. The information is kept for both host and router devices that are neighbors on the local network.

Knowing that a device has become unreachable is important because a host can adapt its behavior accordingly. In the case of an unreachable host, a device may wait a certain period of time before trying to send datagrams to an unreachable host instead of flooding the network with repeated attempts to send to the host. An unreachable router, on the other hand, is a signal that the device needs to find a new router to use, if an alternate is available.

Each host maintains a neighbor cache that contains information about neighboring devices. Each time a host receives a datagram from a neighbor, it knows the neighbor is reachable at that particular moment, so the device makes an entry in the cache for the neighbor to indicate this. Of course, receiving a datagram from a neighbor now only means the neighbor is reachable now; the more time that elapses since the last datagram was received, the greater the chance that something has happened to make the neighbor no longer reachable.

For this reason, neighbor reachability information must be considered temporary. Each time a neighbor is entered into the cache as reachable, a timer is started. When the timer expires, the reachability information for that neighbor is considered stale, and reachability is no longer assumed for that neighbor. When a new datagram is received from the neighbor in question the timer is reset and the cache is again set to indicate that the device is reachable. The amount of time a host should consider a neighbor reachable before expiring it is communicated by a local router using a field in a Router Advertisement message.

A host can also dynamically seek out a neighbor if it needs to know its reachability status. It sends a Neighbor Solicitation to the device and waits for a Neighbor Advertisement in response. It then updates the cache accordingly.

The last use of the two messages we have been discussing here is for Duplicate Address Detection. When a host uses the IPv6 autoconfiguration facility, one of the steps in the process is to ensure that the address it is trying to use doesn't already exist on the network. This is done by sending a Neighbor Solicitation message to the address the device wishes to use. If a Neighbor Advertisement is received in reply the address is already in use.

IPv6 ND Host-Router Discovery Functions: Router Discovery, Prefix Discovery, Parameter Discovery and Address Autoconfiguration 1 2 3 IPv6 ND Redirect Function