Multiple Router Advertisements

JKnott

I thought you were talking about RAs from more than one source. Is that not correct? If so, then there are likely more than one router. If not, then you have some other issue. You even mention a rogue router in your original post. This is strictly a LAN issue, where you can have multiple routers and not a routing protocol issue, unless I have severely misread your original post.

Derelict

There is more than one router. That is known. I called it a rogue because this router should not be sending RAs and it is (breaking IPv6 connectivity for this LAB segment), which is a completely separate issue. It is the behavior of the routing done by the host receiving such RAs that is curious, not the fact that multiple routers on the network are sending RAs.

JKnott

@Derelict

As I mentioned, the behaviour is for the receiving device to use the priority of the RA to determine which to use. However, I have no idea what happens if both RAs have the same priority. You can use Wireshark to see what the priority of a RA is.

kiokoman

ah from the point of view of the host
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8043

Derelict

@kiokoman Yeah that looks like a discussion of what I'm seeing. Thanks.

Derelict

@JKnott You still seem to be missing the point. The RAs were received and the high-priority router was chosen as the default router as expected.

The host was STILL sending traffic to off-link addresses sourced from the SLAAC address through the lower-prority router that announced the prefix for autoconf.

The mechanism this routing decision was made without regard to the routing table on the host is the information I am looking for.

tman904

This mentions that the RA preference is associted with the default router. Do you have a default route configured?
https://www.arubanetworks.com/techdocs/ArubaOS_63_Web_Help/Content/ArubaFrameStyles/IPv6/IPv6_Router_Advertisemen.htm

Derelict

Again, the RAs are used to set the default route. That route is installed in the routing table. The issue I saw was traffic sourced from the SLAAC address went to the "Medium" priority router that was not in the routing table while traffic sourced from the DHCP6 address went according to the routing table - or at least to the "High" priority router which is the same as the DHCP6 server.

jimp

I don't see it in the thread yet but it's worth mentioning for others landing on this thread later that the place to look for this info is in ndp (but not yet in the pfSense GUI):

ndp -r shows the router list (can flush with ndp -R)
ndp -p shows the prefix list (can flush with ndp -P)
ndp -I shows the default interface used when there is no default router (clear with ndp -I delete)
ndp -H will harmonize the NDP router(s) info with the route table

That helps unravel the mystery of IPv6 behavior in unexpected/weird situations like this

tman904

Thank you jimp very helpful advice.:) Sounds like that will solve Derelicts IPV6 mystery.

Derelict

Still some things to examine there but yes the ndp output is what I was looking for.