Network Working Group A. Conta
Request for Comments: 4443 Transwitch
Obsoletes: 2463 S. Deering
Updates: 2780 Cisco Systems
Category: Standards Track M. Gupta, Ed.
Tropos Networks
March 2006
Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMPv6)
for the Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) Specification
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006).
Abstract
This document describes the format of a set of control messages used
in ICMPv6 (Internet Control Message Protocol). ICMPv6 is the
Internet Control Message Protocol for Internet Protocol version 6
(IPv6).
Conta, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 4443 ICMPv6 (ICMP for IPv6) March 2006
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. ICMPv6 (ICMP for IPv6) ..........................................3
2.1. Message General Format .....................................3
2.2. Message Source Address Determination .......................5
2.3. Message Checksum Calculation ...............................5
2.4. Message Processing Rules ...................................5
3. ICMPv6 Error Messages ...........................................8
3.1. Destination Unreachable Message ............................8
3.2. Packet Too Big Message ....................................10
3.3. Time Exceeded Message .....................................11
3.4. Parameter Problem Message .................................12
4. ICMPv6 Informational Messages ..................................13
4.1. Echo Request Message ......................................13
4.2. Echo Reply Message ........................................14
5. Security Considerations ........................................15
5.1. Authentication and Confidentiality of ICMP Messages .......15
5.2. ICMP Attacks ..............................................16
6. IANA Considerations ............................................17
6.1. Procedure for New ICMPV6 Type and Code Value Assignments ..17
6.2. Assignments for This Document .............................18
7. References .....................................................19
7.1. Normative References ......................................19
7.2. Informative References ....................................19
8. Acknowledgements ...............................................20
Appendix A - Changes since RFC 2463................................21
1. Introduction
The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) uses the Internet Control
Message Protocol (ICMP) as defined for IPv4 [RFC-792], with a number
of changes. The resulting protocol is called ICMPv6 and has an IPv6
Next Header value of 58.
This document describes the format of a set of control messages used
in ICMPv6. It does not describe the procedures for using these
messages to achieve functions like Path MTU discovery; these
procedures are described in other documents (e.g., [PMTU]). Other
documents may also introduce additional ICMPv6 message types, such as
Neighbor Discovery messages [IPv6-DISC], subject to the general rules
for ICMPv6 messages given in Section 2 of this document.
Terminology defined in the IPv6 specification [IPv6] and the IPv6
Routing and Addressing specification [IPv6-ADDR] applies to this
document as well.
Conta, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
RFC 4443 ICMPv6 (ICMP for IPv6) March 2006
This document obsoletes RFC 2463 [RFC-2463] and updates RFC 2780
[RFC-2780].
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC-2119].
2. ICMPv6 (ICMP for IPv6)
datatracker.ietf.org