5.1. Example Network Architecture
5.1. Example Network Architecture
Figure 1 illustrates a network architecture in which prefix delegation could be used.
______________________ \
/ \ \
| ISP core network | \
\__________ ___________/ |
| |
+-------+-------+ |
| Aggregation | | ISP
| device | | network
| (delegating | |
| router) | |
+-------+-------+ |
| /
|DSL to subscriber /
|premises /
|
+------+------+ \
| CPE | \
| (requesting | \
| router) | |
+----+---+----+ |
| | | Subscriber
---+-------------+-----+- -+-----+-------------+--- | network
| | | | |
+----+-----+ +-----+----+ +----+-----+ +-----+----+ |
|Subscriber| |Subscriber| |Subscriber| |Subscriber| /
| PC | | PC | | PC | | PC | /
+----------+ +----------+ +----------+ +----------+ /
Figure 1: An example of prefix delegation.
In this example, the delegating router is configured with a set of prefixes to be used for assignment to customers at the time of each customer's first connection to the ISP service. The prefix delegation process begins when the requesting router requests configuration information through DHCP. The DHCP messages from the requesting router are received by the delegating router in the aggregation device. When the delegating router receives the request, it selects an available prefix or prefixes for delegation to the requesting router. The delegating router then returns the prefix or prefixes to the requesting router.
The requesting router subnets the delegated prefix and assigns the longer prefixes to links in the subscriber's network. In a typical scenario based on the network shown in Figure 1, the requesting router subnets a single delegated /48 prefix into /64 prefixes and assigns one /64 prefix to each of the links in the subscriber network.
The prefix delegation options can be used in conjunction with other DHCP options carrying other configuration information to the requesting router. The requesting router may, in turn, then provide DHCP service to hosts attached to the internal network. For example, the requesting router may obtain the addresses of DNS and NTP servers from the ISP delegating router, and then pass that configuration information on to the subscriber hosts through a DHCP server in the requesting router.