How to Advertise IPv6 Networks in RIPng
IPv6 Routing Information Protocol (RIP) also known as RIPng (RIP Next Generation) to support IPv6 addresses. It is a Distance Vector routing protocol uses a hop count as a routing metric. After enabling IPv6 RIP, we also need to configure advertisement of IPv6 RIP routes. We can display IPv6 RIP settings to verify the configuration of RIPng.
It is useful as a foundation for understanding basic network routing. Now examine the reference topology in the figure. In this topology, all routers basic configuration has done and all interfaces of the routers in the reference topology had configured and enabled. 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 the configuration of an IPv6 route to forward IPv6 packets. In the RIPv2 we enable RIP on the router configuration mode only but RIPng is needed to enable 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 that all basic configuration and IP address configuration on Routers interfaces has been done, so we only now required the configuration of RIP next-generation on all interfaces:
Router0
Router1
Enable IPv6 unicast-routing on Router2, Router3, Router4, and Router5 and also configure all interfaces for RIPng 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 following:
Router0(config)ipv6 route 0::/0
Router0(config)ipv6 rip default-information originate
IPv6 route is global configuration mode command and the IPv6 rip is interface mode command.
Verifying the RIPng Configuration
We can verify and examine the configuration using the show ipv6 protocols command but the amount of information as 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 displays the routing table information as shown in Figure. The output can confirm the IPv6 routes installed in the routing table.
Examine the routing table you can see the hop count from Router0 to Router2. Notice that the Router0 two hops for 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 the next-hop router is the first hop but the RIPng count the sending router as the first hop.
