DHCPv6 Relay Agent Notification for Prefix Delegation

DHCPv6 relay agent notification for prefix delegation allows the router working as a DHCPv6 relay agent to find prefix delegation options by reviewing the contents of a DHCPv6 RELAY-REPLY packet that is being relayed by the relay agent to the client. When a prefix delegation option is found by the relay agent, the relay agent extracts the information about the prefix being delegated and inserts an IPv6 static route matching the prefix delegation information onto the relay agent. Future packets destined to that prefix via relay will be forwarded based on the information contained in the prefix delegation. The IPv6 static route is then left in the routing table until the prefix delegation lease time expires or the relay agent receives a release packet from the client releasing the prefix delegation.

No user configuration is required for this feature. Static route management is done automatically by the relay agent.

The IPv6 routes are added when the relay agent relays a RELAY-REPLY packet, and the IPv6 routes are deleted when the prefix delegation lease time expires or the relay agent receives a release message. An IPv6 static route in the routing table of the relay agent can be updated when the prefix delegation lease time is extended.

This feature leaves a static IPv6 route on the routing table of the relay agent. This registered IPv6 address allows unicast reverse packet forwarding (uRPF) to work by allowing the router doing the reverse lookup to confirm that the IPv6 address on the relay agent is not malformed or spoofed. The static route left in the routing table of the relay agent can be redistributed to other routing protocols to advertise the subnets to other nodes. The static routes will be removed when an DHCP_DECLINE message is sent by the client.