1. Introduction

The IPv6 addressing architecture [RFC4291] allows multiple unicast addresses to be assigned to interfaces. These addresses might have different reachability scopes (link-local, site-local, or global). These addresses might also be "preferred" or "deprecated" [RFC4862]. Privacy considerations have introduced the concepts of "public addresses" and "temporary addresses" [RFC4941]. The mobility architecture introduces "home addresses" and "care-of addresses" [RFC6275]. In addition, multi-homing situations will result in more addresses per node. For example, a node might have multiple interfaces, some of them tunnels or virtual interfaces, or a site might have multiple ISP attachments with a global prefix per ISP.

The end result is that IPv6 implementations will very often be faced with multiple possible source and destination addresses when initiating communication. It is desirable to have default algorithms, common across all implementations, for selecting source and destination addresses so that developers and administrators can reason about and predict the behavior of their systems.

Furthermore, dual- or hybrid-stack implementations, which support both IPv6 and IPv4, will very often need to choose between IPv6 and IPv4 when initiating communication, for example, when DNS name resolution yields both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses and the network protocol stack has available both IPv6 and IPv4 source addresses. In such cases, a simple policy to always prefer IPv6 or always prefer IPv4 can produce poor behavior. As one example, suppose a DNS name resolves to a global IPv6 address and a global IPv4 address. If the node has assigned a global IPv6 address and a 169.254/16 auto-configured IPv4 address [RFC3927], then IPv6 is the best choice for communication. But if the node has assigned only a link-local IPv6 address and a global IPv4 address, then IPv4 is the best choice for communication. The destination address selection algorithm solves this with a unified procedure for choosing among both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.

The algorithms in this document are specified as a set of rules that define a partial ordering on the set of addresses that are available for use. In the case of source address selection, a node typically has multiple addresses assigned to its interfaces, and the source address ordering rules in Section 5 define which address is the "best" one to use. In the case of destination address selection, the DNS might return a set of addresses for a given name, and an application needs to decide which one to use first and in what order to try others if the first one is not reachable. The destination address ordering rules in Section 6, when applied to the set of addresses returned by the DNS, provide such a recommended ordering.

This document specifies source address selection and destination address selection separately but uses a common context so that together the two algorithms yield useful results. The algorithms attempt to choose source and destination addresses of appropriate scope and configuration status ("preferred" or "deprecated" in the RFC 4862 sense). Furthermore, this document suggests a preferred method, longest matching prefix, for choosing among otherwise equivalent addresses in the absence of better information.

This document also specifies policy hooks to allow administrative override of the default behavior. For example, using these hooks, an administrator can specify a preferred source prefix for use with a destination prefix or prefer destination addresses with one prefix over addresses with another prefix. These hooks give an administrator flexibility in dealing with some multi-homing and transition scenarios, but they are certainly not a panacea.

The selection rules specified in this document MUST NOT be construed to override an application or upper layer's explicit choice of a legal destination or source address.