How to Advertise IPv6 Networks in RIPng

IPv6 Routing Information Protocol (RIP), also known as RIPng (RIP Next Generation), supports IPv6 addresses. It is a Distance Vector routing protocol that uses a hop count as a routing metric. After enabling IPv6 RIP, we also need to configure the advertisement of IPv6 RIP routes. We can display IPv6 RIP settings to verify the configuration of RIPng.

It is helpful as a foundation for understanding basic network routing. Now, examine the reference topology in the figure. In this topology, all routers’ basic configurations have been completed, and all router interfaces have been configured and enabled. However, there are no dynamic routing and static routes configured on the routers, so remote network access is currently not possible.

The IPv6 unicast routing must be configured on all routers before configuring an IPv6 route to forward IPv6 packets. In the RIPv2, we enable RIP on the router configuration mode only, but RIPng is needed to allow for on each interface of the router on interface mode. There is no <network network-address> command available in RIPng.

Configuration

So, let’s come to the above topology configuration. As I said earlier, all basic configuration and IP address configuration on router interfaces has been done, so we only now require the configuration of RIP next-generation on all interfaces:

Router0

Router1

Enable IPv6 unicast-routing on Router2, Router3, Router4, and Router5 and configure all RIPng interfaces using command <IPv6 rip fschubRIPng enable> command.

Propagate Default IPv6 Route

The default IPv6 static route propagating process in RIPng is equal to RIPv2, except that an IPv6 default static route must be specific. The command for propagating a default static IPv6 route is the following:

Router0(config)ipv6 route 0::/0

Router0(config)ipv6 rip default-information originate

The IPv6 route is the global configuration mode command, and the IPv6 rip is the interface mode command.

Verifying the RIPng Configuration

We can verify and examine the configuration using the show ipv6 protocol command, but the amount of information, as it is for its IPv4 counterpart, is not the same. However, we can confirm the following parameters using the command:

RIPng is configured on the router and also running.

The interfaces where RIPng is enabled.

We can also use the show ipv6 route command to display the routing table information, as shown in Figure. The output can confirm the IPv6 routes installed in the routing table.

Examine the routing table to see the hop count from Router0 to Router2.  Notice that Router0 has two hops for the Router2 network if we configure RIPv1 or RIPv2 for the same Router2. The hop count will be one. This is because the IPv4 routing count of the next-hop router is the first hop, but the RIPng count of the sending router is the first hop.