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IPV6MON(8)		     System Manager's Manual		      IPV6MON(8)

NAME
     ipv6mon - IPv6 address monitoring daemon

SYNOPSIS
     ipv6mon [-c configfile] [-v] [-q] [-h]

DESCRIPTION
     ipv6mon is tool meant for monitoring IPv6 address usage on a local network.
     It  is  particularly  useful in networks that employ IPv6 Stateless Address
     Auto-Configuration (as opposed to DHCPv6), where address assignment is  de-
     centralized  and  there  is  no  central server that records which IPv6 ad-
     dresses have been assigned to which nodes during which period of time.

     ipv6mon employs a number of techniques to determine  which  IPv6  addresses
     are  in  use  on the local network, and active probing to determine whether
     such addresses remain active.

     ADDRESS DISCOVERY TECHNIQUES

     ipv6mon employs a number of techniques techniques to discover  active  IPv6
     addresses:
	 + Active multicast probes
	 + Passive monitoring of Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) traffic
	 + Address generation heuristics

     Multicast probes

     ipv6mon regularly sends multicast probe packets to the all-nodes link-local
     multicast	address (ff02::1), such that it can discover new attached nodes.
     Two different types of probe packets are used:

	 + Regular ICMPv6 Echo Request packets
	 + ICMPv6 packets with an unsupported IPv6 option of type 10xxxxxx

     Regular ICMPv6 Echo Request packets elicit  ICMPv6  Echo  Response  packets
     from  all	local  nodes that normally respond to such packets. On the other
     hand, ICMPv6 packets including  an  unsupported  option  of  type	10xxxxxx
     elicit  ICMPv6  Parameter	Problem  error messages, and can be effective to
     discover nodes that do not usually respond to  multicast  ICMPv6  echo  re-
     quests.

     Both multicast probe packets are sent with different Source Addresses, such
     that they elicit responses from different addresses (as a result of the de-
     fault IPv6 Source Address selection policy). Hence. all (or most) addresses
     of each node can be discovered.

     Passive monitoring of Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) traffic

     ipv6mon  also monitors IPv6 Duplicate Address Detection (DAD) traffic, such
     that all newly configured addresses are discovered as soon as possible.

     Address generation heuristics

     Whenever an active address is detected, heuristics are  performed	to  dis-
     cover  other addresses in use by the same node. Namely, the Interface-ID of
     the newly discovered address is used with all other local prefixes to  form
     "candidate"  addresses  (addresses  that  might be in use in the local net-
     work). Thus, it is possible for ipv6mon to discover active  addresses  even
     if  they  are not used to send traffic on the local network (e.g., discover
     traditional SLAAC addresses used by hosts that employ aPrivacy Addressesa).

OPTIONS
     Most of the operation parameters of the ipv6mon tool can be  configured  by
     the system administrator through the corresponding configuration file. Some
     of them can be configured through command-line options.

     -c file, --config-file file
	    This  option  specifies  the  pathname  of the ipv6mon configuration
	    file, to be used instead of the default /usr/local/etc/ipv6mon.conf.

     -q, --show-config
	    This option causes ipv6mon to read the configuration file and output
	    the different parameters that would result from that  configuration.
	    When  this	option	is  set, ipv6mon will exit immediately after the
	    configuration parameters have been printed on standard output.

     -v, --verbose
	    This option causes ipv6mon to read the configuration file and output
	    the different parameters that would result from that  configuration.
	    When  this	option	is  set, ipv6mon will exit immediately after the
	    configuration parameters have been printed on standard output.

     -h, --help
	    This option causes ipv6mon to print usage  information  on	standard
	    output.

FILES
     /usr/local/etc/ipv6mon.conf
	    ipv6mon configuration file. See ipv6mon.conf(5) for further details.

SEE ALSO
     ipv6mon.conf(5).

AUTHOR
     The  ipv6mon  tool and the corresponding manual pages were produced by Fer-
     nando Gont <fgont@si6networks.com>.

COPYRIGHT
     Copyright (c) 2011-2012 Fernando Gont.

     Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under
     the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or  any  later
     version  published by the Free Software Foundation; with the Invariant Sec-
     tions being just "AUTHOR" and "COPYRIGHT", with no Front-Cover  Texts,  and
     with  no  Back-Cover  Texts.   A  copy  of  the  license  is  available  at
     <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html>.

								      IPV6MON(8)

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