Neighbor discovery and stateless autoconfiguration in IPv6

The next-generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, includes autoconfiguration facilities that allow IPv6 hosts to plug into the network and start communicating with no special configuration required. These facilities address the requirements of hosts connecting to isolated standalone networks (such as home networks). The paper considers how the neighbor discovery protocols provide address-resolution services and allow hosts to find and keep track of routers, determine when a neighbor becomes unreachable, and switch dynamically to backup routers should the ones they are using fail.