NDisc6 : IPv6 diagnostic tools for Linux and BSD

Introduction

NDisc6 is a small collection of useful tools for IPv6 networking. It includes the following programs :

ndisc6: ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery tool

Performs IPv6 neighbor discovery in userland. Replaces arping from the IPv4 world. Can easily be used to monitor other hosts through scripts.

rdisc6: ICMPv6 Router Discovery tool

Queries IPv6 routers on the network for advertised prefixes. Can be used to detect rogue IPv6 routers, monitor legitimate IPv6 routers. Can also be used to force the local host into doing IPv6 autoconfiguration.

tcptraceroute6: lightweight IPv6 tcptraceroute

Use TCP/IPv6 packets to perform a traceroute. Very similar from the user’s perspective to the famous Michael Toren’s tcptraceroute from the IPv4 world.

traceroute6: IPv6 traceroute

Yet another UDP/IPv6 traceroute. Most of the code is shared with tcptraceroute6 above.

rdnssd: Recursive DNS Servers discovery Daemon

This autoconfigures the list of DNS servers through slateless IPv6 autoconfiguration (RFC5006).

These tools are aimed at the GNU/Linux kernel, though they may work on any operating systems implementing the Advanced Sockets Application Program Interface (API) for IPv6 (RFC3542), such as open-source BSD distributions, Darwin and Sun Solaris, to a large extent. They are currently distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, the most widely used open-source software license.