IPv6 over Ethernet

IPv6 is defined to work over most of the link-layer technologies, such as, but not limited to:

• Ethernet [RFC2464]
• PPP [RFC2472]
• FDDI [RFC2467]
• Token-Ring [RFC2470]
• Non-Broadcast Multiple Access (NBMA) [RFC2491]
• ATM [RFC2492]
• Frame-Relay [RFC2590]
• IEEE 1394 (Firewire) [RFC3146]
• Fiber Channel [RFC4338]
• ARCNET [RFC2497]
• MAPOS (Multiple Access Protocol Over SONET/SDH) [RFC3572]

However, for simplicity, this chapter presents IPv6 over Ethernet and PPP, the most commonly used link-layer technologies.

When a node is autoconfigured using the interface identifier, this identifier is based on the MAC Ethernet address of the interface, following the EUI-64 specification [IEEEEU164] described in Section 5.2.1.

In this section, Ethernet addresses are represented as six fields written as octets in hexadecimal with a ‘-’ as field separator (e.g. 00-11-22-33-44-55).