Analysis And Validation Under Linux Of ICMPv6 And Its Correlative Protocols

Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) can not meet the need of IPv6 along with IP from IPv4 to IPv6. In 1998, IETF put forward a new ICMP protocol, i.e. ICMPv6, so as to adapt the need of IPv6. ICMP is the necessary part of IPv6 architecture which must be realized by IPv6. Nowadays ICMPv6 carries out many network functions such as error report, network diagnose, neighbor discovery, multicast, and etc.Starting with the analysis of a series of relevant RFC (Request for Comment) standards, this thesis presents the contents, the message formats and the handling rules of ICMPv6 and its correlative protocols, and compares them with ICMP. The emphases of analysis are on the principles, functions and process procedures on host-to-host and host-to-router of ICMPv6, Neighbor Discovery Protocol, Multicast Listener Discovery for IPv6, and IPv6 Stateless Address Autoconfiguration.ICMPv6 snooping program and ICMPv6 sending program are designed in order to validate the consistency of messages, options and main work processes between the realization of Linux and RFC standards about ICMPv6 and its relevant protocols. ICMPv6 snooping program is used to detect the ICMPv6 messages which are received at monitoring notes. ICMPv6 sending program is used to send the ICMPv6 messages.We applied and got a block of IPv6 address from CERNET (China Education and Research Network) IPv6 testbed. With the applied IPv6 address block and the Tunnel Broker service provided by CERNET IPv6 testbed, we got access to the CERNET IPv6 testbed and 6bone (International IPv6 testbed) through a host acted as a router with RedHat Linux 9.0. We build an experiment network by this router and three other hosts in the lab. One host, which runs the Windows XP operating system, is used only to detect the messages, and the two other hosts run the RedHat Linux 9.0 operating system. ICMPv6 snooping program and ICMPv6 sending program run on hosts and router which run Linux operating system, so as to complete the validation of ICMPv6 and its correlative protocols.