IPv6 From the Ground Up : Part - I

The Basics

**Please go through rfc2373 in its entirety. Life will be much easier after that.

Our learning topology is a simple: two routers just to show neighbor discovery: This will mainly be used on PartII and any others that follow.


Understanding IPv6 without using it is might not be easy, however playing around with it while planning a CCIE should set you on the right path.

To get a proper grasp of IPv6, you need to understand:
- A link-local address, site-local and global IPv6 address.
- The loopback address (::1) for the loopback interface
- The multicast addresses of joined groups
- Number of bits on an IPv6 address (128 - bits, 16 bytes)

Also very important, what is a modified EUI-address, its purpose and how its generated. I found it also very important to know and understand IEEE 802 addresses.

Basics on MAC addressing:
The IEEE 802 address consist of 24 bit company identifier and a 24 bit extension ID. this is uniquely assigned and gives you a 48-bit address. This 48-bit address is also called the physical, hardware, or media access control (MAC) address.

EUI-64 Addresses
This addressing extends the '24-bit' extension ID on a MAC address to 40 bits. The company/manufacturer ID is still left at 24-bits. This 64 bits are then used to identify the host/node. This is what is called a link local address. Routers do not forward this addresses.

To convert a MAC address to an EUI address, I use the following method. Note this only gives us the link local address, in part 2 or 3 we'll discuss how the rest of the address is completed/generated....lets use an example:

Host X has a MAC address of 12-34-56-78-90-12
on a router, this would be the burnt in address (bia) or the mac address.

First we insert FFFE between the 3rd and 4th bytes ie between the vendor ID and extension ID which results to 12-34-5F-FF-E6-78-90-12/1234-5678-9012. You can easilly do this by slicing the address into two halves.

Next take the first byte (two characters=1 byte) so in our case the first byte is 12 (note this is in hex) and convert it to binary - 0001 0010.. Take the 7th most significant bit and flip it/or invert it, this gives 0001 0000. Convert this back to hex and you get :
10-34-5F-FF-E6-78-90-12
put this in proper notation for IPv6 and get:
1034:56FF:FE78:9012

In case you get hang up on wording

The IEEE now considers the label MAC-48 to be an obsolete term which was previously used to refer to a specific type of EUI-48 identifier used to address hardware interfaces within existing 802-based networking applications and should not be used in the future. Instead, the term EUI-48 should be used for this purpose.

references:
RFC2373 - IP Version 6 Addressing Architecture
My friend tells me most of what he learnt on IPv6 was solidified at an internetwork experts boot camp so go over to their site and grab some work book, have no idea which one in particular.

Part II
IPv6 Neighbor Discovery: