Subject: Router Lifetime question

From: "Peter Barany" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 12:51:22 -0500

Hi,

A question regarding RFC 2461. Unless I am missing something, there seems to
be some inconsistency in Sections 6.2.1 and 4.2 of RFC 2461 regarding the
value of the Router Lifetime. How is this resolved? See below. Thanks.

Pete
======

Section 6.2.1 of RFC 2461:
MaxRtrAdvInterval
                     The maximum time allowed between sending
                     unsolicited multicast Router Advertisements from
                     the interface, in seconds.  MUST be no less than 4
                     seconds and no greater than 1800 seconds.

                     Default: 600 seconds

AdvDefaultLifetime
                     The value to be placed in the Router Lifetime field
                     of Router Advertisements sent from the interface,
                     in seconds.  MUST be either zero or between
                     MaxRtrAdvInterval and 9000 seconds.  A value of
                     zero indicates that the router is not to be used as
                     a default router.

                     Default: 3 * MaxRtrAdvInterval

Section 4.2 of RFC 2461.

Router Lifetime
                     16-bit unsigned integer.  The lifetime associated
                     with the default router in units of seconds.  The
                     maximum value corresponds to 18.2 hours.  A
                     Lifetime of 0 indicates that the router is not a
                     default router and SHOULD NOT appear on the default
                     router list.  The Router Lifetime applies only to
                     the router's usefulness as a default router; it
                     does not apply to information contained in other
                     message fields or options.  Options that need time
                     limits for their information include their own
                     lifetime fields.