3.2.1 Local Communication

3.2.1 Local Communication

Link-local IPv6 addresses are used by hosts communicating on a single link. Unique Local IPv6 Unicast Addresses (ULAs) [RFC4193] are used by hosts communicating within the end-user network across multiple links, but without requiring the application to use a globally routable address. The IPv6 CE router defaults to acting as the demarcation point between two networks by providing a ULA boundary, a multicast zone boundary, and ingress and egress traffic filters.

A dual-stack host is multihomed to IPv4 and IPv6 networks. The IPv4 and IPv6 topologies may not be congruent, and different addresses may have different reachability, e.g., ULAs. A host stack has to be able to quickly fail over and try a different source address and destination address pair if communication fails, as outlined in [HAPPY-EYEBALLS].

At the time of this writing, several host implementations do not handle the case where they have an IPv6 address configured and no IPv6 connectivity, either because the address itself has a limited topological reachability (e.g., ULA) or because the IPv6 CE router is not connected to the IPv6 network on its WAN interface. To support host implementations that do not handle multihoming in a multi-prefix environment [MULTIHOMING-WITHOUT-NAT], the IPv6 CE router should not, as detailed in the requirements below, advertise itself as a default router on the LAN interface(s) when it does not have IPv6 connectivity on the WAN interface or when it is not provisioned with IPv6 addresses. For local IPv6 communication, the mechanisms specified in [RFC4191] are used.

ULA addressing is useful where the IPv6 CE router has multiple LAN interfaces with hosts that need to communicate with each other. If the IPv6 CE router has only a single LAN interface (IPv6 link), then link-local addressing can be used instead.

In the event that more than one IPv6 CE router is present on the LAN, then coexistence with IPv4 requires all of them to conform to these recommendations, especially requirements ULA-5 and L-4 below.