Implementation of IPv6 prefix delegation mechanism using DHCPv6 protocol

IPv6 enables simple, automatic host configuration (T. Narten, 1998). Conversely, it does not provide any specification to automatically delegate a prefix to a router. To solve this problem, several requirements were described (S. Miyakawa, 2003) and its solution by using DHCPv6 was standardized (R. Droms et al., 2003). DHCPv6 protocol enables DHCPv6 servers to pass network configuration parameters to IPv6 nodes. DHCPv6 servers can pass IPv6 prefix delegation parameter to a router by using IPv6 prefix options for DHCPv6. The components that we need to implement prefix delegation mechanism are DHCPv6 server/client modules supporting IPv6 prefix options and router advertisement module. In this paper, we implemented DHCPv6 client supporting IPv6 prefix option and used a DHCPv6 server, router advertisement module from open source project to test implemented s/w module