Brief Introduction to Neighbor Discovery Protocol for IPV6 on SonicWall
Description
This article briefs about what is Neighbor Discovery Protocol and the mmessages and functions of IPv6 neighbor that are analogous to the traditional IPv4 neighbor messages.
Resolution
The Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) is a new messaging protocol that was created as part of IPv6 to perform a number of the tasks that ICMP and ARP accomplish in IPv4. Just like ARP, Neighbor Discovery builds a cache of dynamic entries, and the administrator can configure static Neighbor Discovery entries.
Below Table shows the IPv6 neighbor messages and functions that are analogous to the traditional IPv4 neighbor messages.
IPv4/IPv6 neighbor messages and functions
| IPv4 Neighbor message | IPv6 Neighbor message |
| ARP request message | Neighbor solicitation message |
| ARP relay message | Neighbor advertisement message |
| ARP cache | Neighbor cache |
| Gratuitous ARP | Duplicate address detection |
| Router solicitation message (optional) | Router solicitation (required) |
| Router advertisement message (optional) | Router advertisement (required) |
| Redirect message | Redirect Message |
For Assistance on how to Configure static Neighbor Discovery Protocol, click here Configure-static-neighbor-discovery-protocol-entries-ipv6-only
Under the NDP Settings, the maximum time to reach a neighbor is specified . The minimum is 0 seconds, the maximum is 3600 seconds, and the default is 30 seconds.
NDP Cache table displays all current IPv6 neighbors.
It is sometimes necessary to flush the NDP cache if the IP address has changed for a device on the network. As the IP address is linked to a physical address, the IP address can change, but still be associated with the physical address in the NDP Cache. Flushing the NDP Cache allows new information to be gathered and stored in the NDP Cache.