IPv6 routing table - need help

kokowawatot

what does the "L" letter beside a route means in the output of 'show ipv6 route' command ?

it is located beside a route beggining wz 2340:.... etc in my reference , so it is supposed to be global.

it is not link local cuz it doesn't start wz FE80/10 nor it's unique local cuz it doesn't start wz fd/8.

any help :

kokowawatot

What a tough question :

dtlokee

They are most likely host routes to the local router interfaces, are they /128?

kokowawatot

do you mean they are host routes out of my router's ethernet interfaces ?

yes they are /128 ( and thats another thing i cannot understand , what kind of prefix is this )

dtlokee

They are host routes, a route to a single host IP address. The router will create one for each IPv6 address you assign to the interface.

kokowawatot

i'm sorry, I really cannot understand the relationship between a host route and an ip address assigned to an interface :

dtlokee

In IPv6 any route with a mask of /128 is a host route because it specifies only 1 IPv6 address. The reason for these host routes to the local interfaces is basically to tell the router how to route to the local interface IPv6 address. You could also have host routes to remote destinations like loopback interfaces on other routers. The /128 is a good choice for a loopback because it does not waste address space. I know what you're thinking, with IPv6 who cars, there a gazillion billion trillion (some big number ) addresses. It was more common in IPv4 due to the lack of public addresses to use a /32 for your loopback interfaces.

tech-airman

dtlokee wrote:

In IPv6 any route with a mask of /128 is a host route because it specifies only 1 IPv6 address. The reason for these host routes to the local interfaces is basically to tell the router how to route to the local interface IPv6 address. You could also have host routes to remote destinations like loopback interfaces on other routers. The /128 is a good choice for a loopback because it does not waste address space. I know what you're thinking, with IPv6 who cars, there a gazillion billion trillion (some big number ) addresses. It was more common in IPv4 due to the lack of public addresses to use a /32 for your loopback interfaces.

dtlokee,

To add to what you're saying, some hosts actually participate in the routing protocol instead of being just an end point. The example that comes to mind is RIP. According to RFC 1058, it states "Each entity (gateway or host) that participates in the routing protocol is assumed to keep information about all of the destinations within the system."

Source:

1. RFC 1058 - Routing Information Protocol - http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1058

kokowawatot

thnx alot guys