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BRKIPV-2418

This document discusses the deployment of IPv6 routing protocols, focusing on OSPFv3, IS-IS, EIGRP, and BGP, highlighting their unique characteristics and considerations for co-existing with IPv4. It provides an overview of the timeline for IPv6 support in routing protocols and details the specific functionalities and configurations for OSPFv3, including adjacency formation and authentication mechanisms. The session aims to clarify the complexities and best practices for implementing these protocols in an IPv6 environment.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
3 views71 pages

BRKIPV-2418

This document discusses the deployment of IPv6 routing protocols, focusing on OSPFv3, IS-IS, EIGRP, and BGP, highlighting their unique characteristics and considerations for co-existing with IPv4. It provides an overview of the timeline for IPv6 support in routing protocols and details the specific functionalities and configurations for OSPFv3, including adjacency formation and authentication mechanisms. The session aims to clarify the complexities and best practices for implementing these protocols in an IPv6 environment.

Uploaded by

clearmind.at
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 71

Deploying IPv6

Routing Protocols
Specifics and Considerations

Peter Palúch - Cisco Training Bootcamps, CCIE #23527


@Peter_Paluch, [email protected]
BRKIPV-2418

-
What this session is about (abstract)
Even though all major IPv6 routing protocols are rooted in their well-
known IPv4 counterparts, they all come with their own unique set of
idiosyncrasies. And when faced with the task of deploying an IPv6
routing protocol along with its IPv4 variant, there are often multiple
ways of doing it, but the best choice is not always obvious.
The goal of this session is to discuss the specifics of IPv6 support in
OSPFv3, IS-IS, EIGRP, and BGP in IOS XE. For each of these
protocols, we will do a quick IPv6-focused refresher, and then focus
on the protocol's unique IPv6 traits (and quirks). We will also look at
how the protocol supports the co-existence of IPv4 and IPv6, and if
there are multiple options to choose from, we will discuss the pros
and cons of each of them.

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 2
• Considerations for OSPF
• Considerations for IS-IS
• Considerations for EIGRP
Agenda • Considerations for BGP
• Considerations for FHRPs
• Considerations for link-local
only addressing in networks

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 3
Timeline of IPv6
support

-
IPv6 and Support in Routing Protocols
• Work on the next-generation IP protocol started in 1992
• Basic IPv6 as we know it emerged first in 1994 as an Internet Draft
proposal, and in December 1995 as RFC 1883
• Formal routing protocol specifications followed suit
• RIPng – RFC 2080, January 1997 (first draft in February 1996)
• OSPFv3 – RFC 2740, December 1999 (first draft in February 1996)
• BGP – RFC 2545, March 1999 (first draft in February 1997)
• IS-IS – RFC 5308, October 2008 (first draft in January 2000)

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 5
IPv6 Routing Protocol Support in IOS and IOS-XR
Protocol In IOS since In IOS-XR since
RIPng 12.2(2)T 7.5.2
OSPFv3 12.0(24)S / 12.2(15)T 3.7.2
OSPFv3 with Address 15.1(3)S / 15.2(1)T N/A
Family Support
IS-IS 12.2(8)T / 12.0(22)S 3.9.0
BGP 12.2(2)T 3.7.2
EIGRP 12.4(6)T 3.7.2

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 6
Considerations
for OSPF

-
IPv6 Support in Open Shortest Path First
• OSPFv1 (RFC 1131) and OSPFv2 (RFC 2328) only support IPv4
• OSPFv3 (RFC 5340) is a substantial rework to support IPv6
• Initially, OSPFv3 supported only IPv6
• With RFC 5838, OSPFv3 supports address families to advertise both IPv6
and IPv4 prefixes
• Routing both IPv4 and IPv6 with OSPF always requires two entirely
independent processes with all their packet exchanges
• Either OSPFv2 for IPv4 and OSPFv3 for IPv6,
• Or two OSPFv3 instances, one for IPv4 AF, the other for IPv6 AF

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 8
Brush Up on OSPFv3 Basic Traits
• OSPFv3 messages are carried in IPv6 packets
• Sender address: link-local address of the interface
• Destination address: multicast ff02::5, ff02::6, or the link-local address of
the directly connected neighbor
• Global addresses are only used for virtual and sham links

• The 5 basic message types (Hello, DBD, LSR, LSU, LSAck) stay
• Link State Advertisements have been reworked
• Authentication was first left to IPsec, later brought back as
a protocol extension in RFC 7166

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 9
Reasons for Reworking LSAs in OSPFv3
• OSPFv2 “smartly” combined topology and addressing information,
using 4-byte fields for both IDs and addresses
• It was impossible to insert IPv6 addresses into existing LSA formats
• It was impossible to tell apart a topology change from an address change

• OSPFv3 brings several changes to LSAs


• Addressing information moved out from Router and Network LSAs into
new LSA types: Link LSA and Intra-Area-Prefix LSA
• Topology and addressing information are diligently separated
• IDs remain 4 bytes long

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 10
Comparing OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 LSA Types
OSPFv2 OSPFv3
Router-LSA Router-LSA
Network-LSA Network-LSA
Summary-LSA (Network) Inter-Area-Prefix-LSA
Summary-LSA (ASBR) Inter-Area-Router-LSA
AS-External-LSA AS-External-LSA
NSSA-LSA NSSA-LSA

}
Link-LSA
Intra-Area-Prefix-LSA

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 11
Will they establish an adjacency? (1)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ipv6 ospf 1 area 0 ipv6 ospf 1 area 0
! !
ipv6 router ospf 1 ipv6 router ospf 1

Yes – this is basic legacy style (non-AF) OSPFv3 configuration

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 12
Will they establish an adjacency? (2)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ipv6 ospf 1 area 0 ip ospf 1 area 0
! !
ipv6 router ospf 1 router ospf 1

No – OSPFv3 does not interoperate with OSPFv2

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 13
Will they establish an adjacency? (3)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ipv6 ospf 2 area 0 ospfv3 1 ipv6 area 0
! !
ipv6 router ospf 2 router ospfv3 1
address-family ipv6 unicast

Yes – non-AF and AF-enabled OSPFv3 for IPv6 interoperate

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 14
Will they establish an adjacency? (4)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip ospf 1 area 0 ospfv3 1 ipv4 area 0
! !
router ospf 1 router ospfv3 1
address-family ipv4 unicast

No – OSPFv3 does not interoperate with OSPFv2 even in IPv4 AF

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 15
OSPFv3 Adjacency Formation Overview
R1 Configuration R2 Configuration Adjacency?
router ospfv3 / IPv6 AF ipv6 router ospf Yes
router ospfv3 / IPv6 AF router ospf No
router ospfv3 / IPv6 AF router ospfv3 / IPv4 AF No
router ospfv3 / IPv4 AF ipv6 router ospf No
router ospfv3 / IPv4 AF router ospf No
ipv6 router ospf router ospf No

Identical configurations on both routers omitted for brevity

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 16
IPv4 with OSPFv2 vs. OSPFv3 IPv4 AF
• When considering the choice of OSPFv2 vs. OSPFv3 IPv4 AF, there
are some compelling arguments in favor of OSPFv3
• If also running IPv6, using a single protocol means greater consistency
• Potential better use of Partial SPF as opposed to Full SPF
• Prefix suppression works more efficiently
• IPv4 addresses on inter-router links do not matter much (can be from
discontiguous networks or unnumbered if allowed)
• Stub router functionality through the R-bit
• IPsec authentication and even encryption of OSPFv3 packets if desired

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 17
CLI gotchas with OSPFv3 IPv4 AF
r2# show ip route
[ ... snip ... ]
10.0.0.0/8 is variably subnetted, 7 subnets, 2 masks
C 10.0.12.0/24 is directly connected, Ethernet0/1
L 10.0.12.2/32 is directly connected, Ethernet0/1
C 10.0.23.0/24 is directly connected, Ethernet0/0
L 10.0.23.2/32 is directly connected, Ethernet0/0
O 10.255.255.1/32 [110/10] via 10.0.12.1, 00:03:12, Ethernet0/1
C 10.255.255.2/32 is directly connected, Loopback0
O 10.255.255.3/32 [110/10] via 10.0.23.3, 00:03:12, Ethernet0/0
O 192.0.2.0/24 [110/11] via 10.0.12.1, 00:03:12, Ethernet0/1
O 203.0.113.0/24 [110/11] via 10.0.23.3, 00:03:12, Ethernet0/0

r2# show ip route ospf


r2#
What’s going on here?

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 18
OSPFv3 CLI
r2# show ip route ospf?
Hostname or A.B.C.D ospf ospfv3

r2# show ip route ospfv3


[ ... snip ... ]
10.0.0.0/8 is variably subnetted, 7 subnets, 2 masks
O 10.255.255.1/32 [110/10] via 10.0.12.1, 00:08:15, Ethernet0/1
O 10.255.255.3/32 [110/10] via 10.0.23.3, 00:08:15, Ethernet0/0
O 192.0.2.0/24 [110/11] via 10.0.12.1, 00:08:15, Ethernet0/1
O 203.0.113.0/24 [110/11] via 10.0.23.3, 00:08:15, Ethernet0/0
r2#

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 19
OSPFv3 Authentication
• Initially, OSPFv3 did not have its own authentication mechanism
• The task of authenticating OSPFv3 packets was relegated to IPsec
• Real life showed little adoption
• As a protocol suite, IPsec is complex
• IPsec support is far from ubiquitous
• Configuration is purely manual and rather tedious
• RFC 7166 brings back the authentication trailer function to OSPFv3
• Easier to configure through key chains

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 20
OSPFv3 Authentication Trailer Configuration

R1 R2

key chain keys


key 1
key-string CiscoLive
cryptographic-algorithm hmac-sha-512
!
interface Gi1
[ ... snip ... ]
ospfv3 1 ipv6 authentication key-chain keys

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 21
“Keep-in-Mind” Facts About OSPFv3
• Despite providing services to IPv4, OSPFv3 for IPv4 continues to be
encapsulated in IPv6
• Important for ACLs, QoS, monitoring
• Virtual links are not supported in OSPFv3 IPv4 AFI
• This is because OSPFv3 uses IPv6 but there is neither a guarantee that
the virtual link endpoints have global IPv6 addresses, nor can they be
advertised in an IPv4 AFI
• In pure IPv6 environment, manual RID configuration is required

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 22
The more you improve
OSPF, the more you get
IS-IS.

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 23
Considerations
for IS-IS

-
IPv6 Support in IS-IS
• IS-IS by its very nature invites multiprotocol capability
• Runs directly over Layer2 frames
• Information is encoded as Type-Length-Value (TLV) records
• Link State PDUs carry TLVs of various types within their flooding scope

• RFC 1195 brought IPv4 support to IS-IS


• Integrated IS-IS – a single IS-IS instance handling both OSI and IPv4
• RFC 5308 brings IPv6 support to IS-IS
• Continues the integrated approach – a single IS-IS instance possibly
handling OSI, IPv4 and IPv6 routing at once

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 25
RFC 5308 IPv6 Extensions to IS-IS
• IPv6 Reachability TLV 236 (0xEC)
• Carries a single IPv6 prefix with its metric and other attributes
• IPv6 Interface Address TLV 232 (0xE8)
• Carries an interface’s IPv6 address
• IPv6 Network Layer Protocol ID value of 142 (0x8E)
• Indicates support of IPv6

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 26
Consequences of integrated AF handling in IS-IS
• IS-IS handles all enabled routed protocols in a single instance
• On wire, there is only a single exchange of PDUs for all address families
• If an adjacency is torn down or cannot be established, all address families
are impacted
• Churn in one address family still causes flooding new LSPs with
information about all address families
• By default, on IOS, IOS XE and NX-OS, all address families are forced to
share the same topology, the same link costs, and hence the same best
paths

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 27
Will they establish an adjacency? (1)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ipv6 router isis ipv6 router isis
! !
router isis router isis
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00 net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00

Yes – this is basic configuration of IS-IS for IPv6

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 28
Will they establish an adjacency? (2)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip router isis ip router isis
ipv6 router isis !
! router isis
router isis net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00

No – R1 is missing the IPv6 Interface Address TLV in IIH from R2

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 29
Will they establish an adjacency? (3)
Solution

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip router isis ip router isis
ipv6 router isis !
! router isis
router isis net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00
address-family ipv6
no adjacency-check

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 30
Will they establish an adjacency? (4)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip router isis ipv6 router isis
ipv6 router isis !
! router isis
router isis net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00

No – R1 is missing the IPv4 Interface Address TLV in IIH from R2

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 31
Will they establish an adjacency? (5)
Solution

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip router isis ipv6 router isis
ipv6 router isis !
! router isis
router isis net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00
no adjacency-check

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 32
Enabling IPv4 and IPv6 in an IS-IS instance
• If running IS-IS for one IP protocol already, enabling IS-IS for the
other IP protocol may cause the existing adjacency to drop
• This is because one router requires the neighbor to pass adjacency sanity
checks which will fail if both protocols are not enabled at the same time
• The workaround is to temporarily disable the adjacency checks

• By default, once IPv4 and IPv6 are enabled, they will both be forced
onto a single topology (IOS, IOS XE, NX-OS)
• No ability to define independent link costs for IPv4 and IPv6
• The best paths for IPv4 and IPv6 will be always identical

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 33
IS-IS Multi Topology Extensions
• RFC 5120 brings Multi Topology (MT) Extensions to IS-IS
• Ability to treat IPv4 and IPv6 topologies independently
• MT IS-IS has tremendous advantages
• Enabling MT and IPv6 on a router does not cause adjacency drops with
neighbors that do not run MT and/or IPv6
• IPv4 and IPv6 topologies can have independent link costs
• Even with MT, IS-IS still runs a single instance
• IOS-XR defaults to the use of multi-topology extensions
• The prerequisite for using MT Extensions is to run wide metrics

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 34
Configuring Multi Topology Extensions in IS-IS

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
ip router isis ip router isis
ipv6 router isis !
isis ipv6 metric 1234 router isis
! net 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00
router isis metric-style wide
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00
metric-style wide
address-family ipv6
multi-topology

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 35
Considerations
for EIGRP

-
EIGRP Support for IPv6 (1)
• EIGRP architecture is build from ground up to support multiple AFs
• The core protocol engine stays the same
• Protocol Dependent Modules provide the adaptation services for the
particular address family (IPX, IPv4, IPv6…)
• One protocol instance (process) handles one address family

• EIGRP supports IPv6 since IOS 12.4T


• All EIGRP configuration should be done using the named mode
• Classic configuration mode (router eigrp asn / ipv6 router
eigrp asn) is obsolete and should not be used anymore

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 37
EIGRP Support for IPv6 (2)
• IPv4 and IPv6 EIGRP processes are independent
• Properties like timers, authentication, passive interfaces, split horizon,
next-hop-self, distribute / offset lists, stub are local to every process
• Despite running a separate protocol instance for IPv4 and IPv6, it is
not possible to have independent EIGRP interface metrics
• Bandwidth, delay, reliability, load – these are protocol-agnostic
• At most, it is possible to use different K-values in different processes

• In IOS, IPv6 EIGRP automatically runs on all IPv6-enabled interfaces


• For better control, use shutdown in af-interface default

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 38
IPv6 EIGRP Addressing and Packets
• IPv6 EIGRP messages are carried in IPv6 packets
• Sender address: link-local address of the interface
• Destination address: multicast ff02::a or the link-local address of the
directly connected neighbor
• Global addresses are only used for static remote neighbors

• The 7 basic message types (Hello, Update, Query, Reply, Ack, SIA-
Query, SIA-Reply) stay

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 39
Will they establish an adjacency? (1)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
! !
router eigrp ROCKS router eigrp RULES
address-family ipv4 auton 1 address-family ipv4 auton 1
network 10.0.0.0 network 10.0.0.0
address-family ipv6 auton 1 address-family ipv6 auton 1

Yes – in both IPv4 and IPv6 address families

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 40
Will they establish an adjacency? (2)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
! !
router eigrp ROCKS router eigrp ROCKS
address-family ipv4 auton 1 address-family ipv4 auton 1
network 10.0.0.0 address-family ipv6 auton 1
address-family ipv6 auton 1

Yes – but only in the IPv6 address family

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 41
Will they establish an adjacency? (3)

R1 R2

interface Gi1 interface Gi1


ip address 10.0.0.1 255.255.255.0 ip address 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0
ipv6 address fe80::1 link-local ipv6 address fe80::2 link-local
! !
router eigrp ROCKS router eigrp ROCKSv4
address-family ipv4 auton 1 address-family ipv4 auton 1
network 10.0.0.0 network 10.0.0.0
address-family ipv6 auton 1 !
router eigrp ROCKSv6
address-family ipv6 auton 1
Yes – in both IPv4 and IPv6 address families
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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 42
“Keep-in-Mind” Facts About EIGRP for IPv6
• For IPv6 AF, the “offset-list” is not implemented
• Instead, use a route-map modifying the metric in a distribute-list
• Use the max bandwidth value to prevent overriding the minBW
• Override the delay component instead

route-map Offset permit 10


set metric 4294967295 655360 255 1 1500
!
router eigrp ROCKS
address-family ipv6 autonomous-system ...
topology base
distribute-list route-map Offset { in | out } Gi1

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 43
“Keep-in-Mind” Facts About EIGRP for IPv6
• Unequal Cost Multi Path (“variance”) for IPv6 is not functional
• Unequal paths will be installed into IPv6 FIB as equal paths
• This is due to a lack of metric-based UCMP support in IPv6 RIB
• The issue is tracked through CSCwi91760 as an enhancement request

• In pure IPv6 environment, manual RID configuration is required

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 44
Considerations
for BGP

-
Multi Protocol Extensions and IPv6 in BGP
• IPv6 support in BGP stands on two pillars
• Multi Protocol extensions (MP), brought first in RFC 2283 (February 1998)
• Use of MP for IPv6, brought first in RFC 2545 (March 1999)

• MP extensions (MP-BGP) allow advertising multiple address


families in a single peering

IPv4, IPv6, VPNv4, …

R1 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.2 R2

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 46
Multi Protocol (MP) BGP Considerations
• MP-BGP is only concerned with encoding of different address
families and their NLRI in existing BGP messages
• No need to be concerned with transport: BGP runs on top of TCP, and
TCP already runs on top of IPv4/IPv6
• With MP-BGP, there is no longer a 1:1 relation between the
neighbor’s address type (IPv4 or IPv6) and the type of routes
• Neighbor’s address no longer implies the type of content to exchange
• Configuring an MP-BGP neighbor is about two distinct qualities
• Who the neighbor is and how we talk to it (address, ASN, password, …)
• What content we exchange with it (IPv4 routes, IPv6 routes, …)

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 47
MP-BGP IPv4-addressed Neighbors
router bgp 64512
no bgp default ipv4-unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 64512
neighbor 192.0.2.2 update-source Loopback0 Who
neighbor 192.0.2.3 remote-as 64513
!
address-family ipv4 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate
neighbor 192.0.2.3 activate
! What
address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate

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BRKIPV-2418 © 2025 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Cisco Public 48
MP-BGP IPv6-addressed Neighbors
router bgp 64512
no bgp default ipv4-unicast
neighbor 2001:db8:cafe::1 remote-as 64512
neighbor 2001:db8:cafe::1 update-source Loopback0 Who
neighbor 2001:db8:f00d::2 remote-as 64513
!
address-family ipv4 unicast
no neighbor 2001:db8:cafe::1 activate
neighbor 2001:db8:f00d::2 activate
! What
address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 2001:db8:cafe::1 activate

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Next Hop Address Considerations with MP-BGP
• The primary consideration with MP-BGP is the next hop address
• By default, when advertising a route,
• iBGP keeps the next hop unchanged
• eBGP sets the next hop to the local source address of the peering

• This poses a problem when the source address of the peering


session is from a different address family than the advertised route

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IPv6 Next Hop Address Selection in BGP
• According to RFC 2545, BGP next hop for IPv6 routes can carry
• Global IPv6 address only
• Global and link local IPv6 addresses if the peers are on a common subnet

BGP Peer Configured Via… Advertised Next Hop Next Hop Installed in RIB
IPv6 Global Address on link (eBGP) Global + Link Local Link Local
IPv6 Global Address off link (eBGP) Global Global
IPv6 Global Address (iBGP) Global Global
IPv6 Link Local Address Link Local Link Local

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Advertising IPv6 routes in IPv4-based Peerings
2001:db8::1 2001:db8::2
R1 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.2 R2
router bgp 64512 router bgp 64513
no bgp default ipv4-unicast no bgp default ipv4-unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 64513 neighbor 192.0.2.1 remote-as 64512
! !
address-family ipv6 unicast address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate neighbor 192.0.2.1 activate

All IPv6 routes advertised to R2 will have All IPv6 routes advertised to R1 will have
their next hop set to ::ffff:192.0.2.1 and will their next hop set to ::ffff:192.0.2.2 and will
be unreachable be unreachable

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Solving the Next Hop Problem for IPv6 Routes
• There are three main approaches for proper next hop setting of
IPv6 routes advertised over IPv4 peerings
• Configure outbound route map or RPL policy to set the next hop
• Enable the automatic IPv6 next hop address selection for IPv4 peers
• Use multiple sessions – IPv6-based for IPv6 AF, IPv4-based for IPv4 AF

• There are pros and cons to each approach


• Sharing a single session conserves system resources but creates a single
point of failure
• Manually setting next hops on each peering is tedious and error-prone
• Multiple sessions are somewhat more resource hungry

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Setting IPv6 Next Hops through Route Maps
2001:db8::1 2001:db8::2
R1 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.2 R2
route-map NH permit 10 route-map NH permit 10
set ipv6 next-hop 2001:db8::1 set ipv6 next-hop 2001:db8::2
! !
router bgp 64512 router bgp 64513
no bgp default ipv4-unicast no bgp default ipv4-unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 64513 neighbor 192.0.2.1 remote-as 64512
! !
address-family ipv6 unicast address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate neighbor 192.0.2.1 activate
neighbor 192.0.2.2 route-map NH out neighbor 192.0.2.1 route-map NH out

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Automatic IPv6 Next Hop Address Selection
• This feature assumes that two BGP peers communicate over IPv4
but their update source interfaces also have global IPv6 addresses
• The IPv6 next hop will then be set following these rules:
• Use the next hop set by the outbound route-map, if any; else
• Use the global IPv6 address of the neighbor ... update-source interface,
if any; else
• Use the global and link-local IPv6 address of the local interface directly
connected to the on-link peer, if any; else
• Use the local source IPv4 address of the peering, encoded in IPv4-
mapped IPv6 address format

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Automatic IPv6 Next Hop Address Selection
2001:db8::1 2001:db8::2
R1 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.2 R2
router bgp 64512 router bgp 64513
no bgp default ipv4-unicast no bgp default ipv4-unicast
no bgp default ipv6-nexthop no bgp default ipv6-nexthop
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 64513 neighbor 192.0.2.1 remote-as 64512
! !
address-family ipv6 unicast address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate neighbor 192.0.2.1 activate

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Multiple Dedicated Sessions
• Using multiple AF-dedicated sessions is the simplest approach
• IPv4 peer address + IPv4 AF only
• IPv6 peer address + IPv6 AF only

• Despite mildly increased resource and configuration overhead,


there are major advantages
• Simplicity and intuitiveness of the design
• Next hop will be handled automatically and correctly as expected
• A hiccup in one AF won’t destabilize the other one

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Multiple Sessions for IPv4 and IPv6
2001:db8::1 2001:db8::2
R1 192.0.2.1 192.0.2.2 R2
router bgp 64512 router bgp 64513
no bgp default ipv4-unicast no bgp default ipv4-unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 64513 neighbor 192.0.2.1 remote-as 64512
neighbor 2001:db8::2 remote-as 64513 neighbor 2001:db8::1 remote-as 64512
! !
address-family ipv4 unicast address-family ipv4 unicast
neighbor 192.0.2.2 activate neighbor 192.0.2.1 activate
no neighbor 2001:db8::2 activate no neighbor 2001:db8::1 activate
! !
address-family ipv6 unicast address-family ipv6 unicast
neighbor 2001:db8::2 activate neighbor 2001:db8::1 activate

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Must the Next Hop AF Match the NLRI AF?
• So far, we have assumed that routes from a particular AF must
have a next hop from the same AF
• For BGP, this is long not true
• For example, VPNv4 and VPNv6 routes use IPv4 next hops
• The ability to decouple next hop AF from the route AF is the key to
building overlay solutions over independent underlay
• RFC 8590 allows advertising IPv4 routes with an IPv6 next hop
• IPv4 over IPv6 core, using tunneling
• IPv4 VPN over IPv6 core, using MPLS et al.

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Considerations
for FHRPs

-
IPv6 First Hop Redundancy Protocols
• IPv6 by design offers a basic gateway redundancy
• Router priority in RAs – High, Normal, Low
• No rapid or seamless switchover, though

• Cisco’s HSRPv2, GLBP and VRRPv3 all support IPv6


• For VRRP, the fhrp version vrrp v3 global config command must
be configured before attempting to configure it on interfaces
• Group numbers may require some consideration
• HSRPv2 and GLBP require unique group numbers for IPv4 and IPv6
• VRRPv3 allows reusing the same group number for IPv4 and IPv6

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IPv6 First Hop Redundancy Protocols
• VRRPv3, HSRPv2 and GLBP all protect the link-local address
• VRRPv3 and HSRPv2 can also protect a non-LL address
• VRRP has a concept of “address owner”
• The one router whose real IP matches the virtual IP
• This router will always be the Master router
• In IPv6, only the link-local real IP can match the virtual IP

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Considerations
for link-local
only addressing
in networks

-
Using link-local addresses on infrastructure links
• It is possible to set up a routed network using exclusively link-local
addresses on router-to-router links
• IGPs limit themselves to using LLAs anyway in most cases
• For global reachability, routers can use a single loopback with a global
address advertised in IGP
• Using the same LLA on all interfaces of a router makes things very simple

• This approach is very attractive and quick to deploy


• Similar to prefix suppression in OSPF and IS-IS
• There are, of course, pros and cons to this approach

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RFC 7404
Using Only Link-Local Addressing inside an IPv6 Network
• Advantages: • Caveats:
• Smaller routing tables • Interface ping
• Simpler address management • Traceroute
• Lower configuration complexity • Hardware dependency (MAC)
• Reduced attack surface • MPLS Traffic Engineering

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Conclusion

-
Conclusion

-
Fill Out Your Session Surveys

Participants who fill out a minimum of 4 session


surveys and the overall event survey will get a
unique Cisco Live t-shirt.
(from 11:30 on Thursday, while supplies last)

All surveys can be taken in the Cisco Events


mobile app or by logging in to the Session Catalog
and clicking the ‘Participant Dashboard’

Content Catalog

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• Visit the Cisco Showcase
for related demos

• Book your one-on-one


Meet the Engineer meeting

Continue • Attend the interactive education


with DevNet, Capture the Flag,
your education and Walk-in Labs

• Visit the On-Demand Library


for more sessions at
ciscolive.com/on-demand.
Sessions from this event will be
available from March 3.

Contact me at: [email protected]

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Thank you

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