Choice of address for IPv6 default gateway

[rps at maine.edu (Ray Soucy)]

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Leo Bicknell <bicknell at ufp.org> wrote:

> I don't think the industry has really found a best practice to
> document yet. ?There are people trying different ideas. ?We find
> the following convention allows us to keep things organized:
>
> <prefix>::1 ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?- Default gateway
> <prefix>::<last octect IPv4> - Statically assigned servers.
> <prefix>:<eui-64> ? ? ? ? ? ?- Auto-configured host

This is essentially what we do (except we use the hex value of the
last octet, so .34 would be ::22, probably just the purist in me).

If you have an environment where hosts will be statically configured,
then you probably want to use a global default, if only to avoid
confusion from users or poorly written software that expects the
default to be in the same prefix as the address.

If people understand their prefix is 2001:DB8::/64, and the gateway is
2001:DB8::1 it raises a lot less questions than "your prefix is
2001:DB8::/64 but your default router is FE80...".

--
Ray Soucy

Epic Communications Specialist

Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526

Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System
http://www.networkmaine.net/