Subject: Re: IPv6 RAW packets

From: "Roy Brabson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 13:58:48 -0400

On Wednesday, 09/26/2001 at 12:49 AST, Lori Napoli/Raleigh/IBM@IBMUS wrote:
> Just curious what other implementations are  doing with RAW IPv6 packets.
> When you send the packet back up to the application are you including the
> IPv6 header and all the extension headers?  Theoretically, an application
> that is performing ICMP ECHO/ECHOREPLIES doesn't need anything in the
IPv6
> header or extension header but obviously an application that is
performing
> Neighbor Discovery would.   If you are returning the IPv6 header and
> extension headers, then I imagine all the IPv6 RAW applications need to
add
> code to handle all the extension headers since the IPv6 header doesn't
have
> a field that gives the length of all the headers like IPv4.  Right?

A quick look at RFC2292, as well as the now-expired *bis version, indicates
that neither the IPv6 header nor the extension headers are made available
to applications in their raw format (i.e., as part of the packet data).
Instead, the relevant information is made available using ancillary data
objects.  Applications can control which ancillary data objects they
receive using socket options and/or ancillary data.  The relevant text
describing this is in Section 3 of both documents.

Roy Brabson

--------------------------------------------------------------------
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-masked]
--------------------------------------------------------------------