A hierarchical topology discovery service for IPv6 networks

Being able to maintain an accurate image of the network topology is one of the basic requirements of any management solution. While the solution to this requirement is not obvious in IPv4 networks, it becomes even harder when IPv6 is deployed. The huge address space which prevents the use of any iterative method is, among others, a feature that makes the problem challenging. We address this subject by (1) identifying the parts of algorithms already used in IPv4 networks that can be reused in IPv6 networks; (2) enumerating all protocol and addressing features of an IPv6 network that make this problem challenging;(3) proposing a novel application based solely on IPv6 services that can be used in any LAN management platform to ensure discovery of layer 3 topology.