3.2 IPv6 End-User Network Architecture

3.2 IPv6 End-User Network Architecture

The end-user network architecture for IPv6 should provide equivalent or better capabilities and functionality than the current IPv4 architecture.

The end-user network is a stub network. Figure 1 illustrates the model topology for the end-user network.

                 +-------+-------+                      \
                 |   Service     |                       \
                 |   Provider    |                        | Service
                 |    Router     |                        | Provider
                 +-------+-------+                        | network
                         |                               /
                         | Customer                     /
                         | Internet connection         /
                         |
                  +------+--------+                    \
                  |     IPv6      |                     \
                  | Customer Edge |                      \
                  |    Router     |                      /
                  +---+-------+-+-+                     /
      Network A       |       |   Network B            | End-User
---+-------------+----+-    --+--+-------------+---    | network(s)
   |             |               |             |        \
+----+-----+ +-----+----+     +----+-----+ +-----+----+   \
|IPv6 Host | |IPv6 Host |     | IPv6 Host| |IPv6 Host |   /
|          | |          |     |          | |          |  /
+----------+ +-----+----+     +----------+ +----------+ /

        Figure 1: An Example of a Typical End-User Network

This architecture describes the:

• Basic capabilities of an IPv6 CE router
• Provisioning of the WAN interface connecting to the service provider
• Provisioning of the LAN interfaces

For IPv6 multicast traffic, the IPv6 CE router may act as a Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) proxy [RFC4605] and may support a dynamic multicast routing protocol.

The IPv6 CE router may be manually configured in an arbitrary topology with a dynamic routing protocol. Automatic provisioning and configuration are described for a single IPv6 CE router only.