2.8 KiB
Further Reading
There are massive amounts of information about IPv6 "out there" on the Internet. Readers should be aware that not all of it is reliable. Very often, it is out of date, because IPv6 was originally designed in the 1990s and the Internet as a whole has evolved a lot since then, and IPv6 has been updated in consequence.
The definitive source of IPv6 standards, best current practices, and other technical information is the latest RFCs (Requests for Comments) from the IETF. RFCs are freely available from the RFC Editor.
Warning: obsolete RFCs are never modified or deleted. It is essential to look at the current status of an RFC before trusting it. For example, the current status of the 2017 version of the main IPv6 standard is shown at this info page. If an RFC is marked as "Obsoleted by" it should be ignored - look instead at the newer RFC that replaces it. Thus, any reference to RFC 2460 should be treated as a reference to RFC 8200.
Even if not obsoleted, an RFC may be "Updated by" one or more newer RFCs. You need to look at those too.
If an RFC is marked as "Proposed Standard" or "Internet Standard" or "Best Current Practice (BCP)" it is the result of rough consensus in the IETF and is a definitive specification. However, that doesn't override "Obsoleted by" or "Updated by".
If it's marked "Informational", "Experimental", or "Historic", those words mean exactly what they say.
Here's an attempt to explain this with a diagram:
flowchart LR
R[RFC x] --> I[Info page]
I --> O[Obsoleted by RFC y] --> GT[Go to RFC y] --> R
I --> H[Historic] --> IG[Ignore]
I --> U[Updated by RFC z] --> AS[Also see RFC z] --> R
I --> C[RFC is current]
C --> F[Informational] --> J[Apply judgment]
C --> E[Experimental] --> J
C --> S[Standard] --> L[Follow specification]
C --> B[BCP] --> L
An important RFC is the latest version of IPv6 Node Requirements, which cites numerous other RFCs. However, at the time of this writing, there are already at least 12 more recent IPv6 RFCs from the IETF since the last update of the node requirements. The documents of the main IETF working groups concerned with IPv6 are listed at the 6MAN and V6OPS web pages. Beware of the fact that these pages list unapproved drafts and obsolete RFCs as well as current RFCs.
There are also numerous books and other documents about IPv6. Here are some of them:
The JANET technical guide to IPv6
TBD TBD
However, any book that is more than one or two years old is likely to be out of date in some aspects.