The Site Multihoming by IPv6 Intermediation (SHIM6) protocol is an
Internet Layer
The internet layer is a group of internetworking methods, protocols, and specifications in the Internet protocol suite that are used to transport network packets from the originating host across network boundaries; if necessary, to the destinat ...
defined in RFC 5533.
Architecture
The SHIM6 architecture defines failure detection and locator pair exploration functions. The first is used to detect outages through the path defined by the current locator pair for a communication. To achieve this, hints provided by upper protocols such as
Transmission Control Protocol
The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol suite. It originated in the initial network implementation in which it complemented the Internet Protocol (IP). Therefore, the entire suite is commonly ...
(TCP) are used, or specific SHIM6 packet probes. The second function is used to determine valid locator pairs that could be used when an outage is detected.
The ability to change locators while a communication is being held introduces security problems, so mechanisms based on applying cryptography to the address generation process (
Cryptographically Generated Addresses A Cryptographically Generated Address (CGA) is an Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) address that has a host identifier computed from a cryptographic hash function. This procedure is a method for binding a public signature key to an IPv6 address in ...
, CGA), or on bounding the addresses to the prefixes assigned to a host through
hash-based addresses were defined. These approaches are not needed for IPv4 because of the short address length (32 bits).
An implementation of shim6 in the Linux kernel is available under the name ''LinShim6''.
linshim6 at the Departement of Computing Science and Engineering at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Louvain-la-Neuve
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See also
* Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol
Locator/ID Separation Protocol (LISP) () is a "map-and-encapsulate" protocol which is developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force LISP Working Group. The basic idea behind the separation is that the Internet architecture combines two functio ...
References
* C. de Launois and M. Bagnulo.
The Paths towards IPv6 Multihoming
IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 8(2), 2006
External links
IETF SHIM6 Working Group status page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Site Multihoming By Ipv6 Intermediation
Internet architecture
Multihoming
IPv6
Routing