Subject: '::' address as destination

From: Lilian Fernandes <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 11:24:01 -0600 (CST)

Hello,

RFC 2373 states that:
"The unspecified address must not be used as the destination address
 of IPv6 packets or in IPv6 Routing Headers."

However it seems that certain stacks are using this address in a different
way.

When '::' is the destination address:
- some use the first available interface's address
- some use the loopback address

Is there a chance that one of these will become the acceptable norm? It
would be interesting to know if the majority of implementations actually
return an error for this case.

Thanks,
_____________________________________________________________________

Lilian Fernandes
AIX TCP/IP Development - IBM Austin
Tel: 512-838-7966	Fax: 512-838-3509

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From: Arthur Kepner <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Dec 2001 10:55:48 -0800

My interpretation is the literal one - that the unspecified address 
as a destination should produce an error.

That is what happens on *BSD boxes, but Solaris seems to interpret ::
as the loopback. What implementations use the first address on the 
interface?

Arthur