Illustrated TCP/IP by Matthew G. Naugle Wiley Computer Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN: 0471196568   Pub Date: 11/01/98

Chapter 156
Autoconfiguration

Autoconfiguration is the ability of an IPv6 node to start up and dynamically attain its node and network addresses. There are two types of autoconfiguration:

Stateful. Some external device assists the node at startup to determine its network address (prefix), node address, and perhaps some router addresses. A consideration of this is for DHCP to enable the configuring of an initializing node.

Stateless. This means that the node will configure itself and find its resources on the network through the use of multicast addresses. This allows the node to start up and send out request messages to which other nodes will respond. The node can then determine its network address and prefix and node address based on these responses. IPv6 nodes start this behavior by joining the all-nodes multicast group upon startup. This is accomplished by initializing the interface to the all-nodes multicast address of FF02::1. These nodes can solicit information from routers using the all-routers multicast address of FF02::2 as the destination and their own link local addresses as the source.

Stateless autoconfiguration has its advantages in that it is really automatic and very simple to use. However, this type of configuration is vulnerable to hackers who could simply place their network station on the subnet and immediately gain access to the resources on that subnet. Stateful autoconfiguration was developed to combat such a threat.