IPv6 Auto Discovery

[Steve Bertrand]

Doug Hardie wrote:
> Mac OS-X does a form of auto discovery on IPv6 where the machines on a 
> local network add the machine name to the ndp table when they see 
> activity from that machine.  

...FreeBSD does this as well (Neighbor Discovery).

pearl# ndp -a
Neighbor		Linklayer Address  Netif Expire    S Flags
lanx.eagle.ca		0:b:46:3e:f3:41     fxp0 23h59m41s S R
vandetta.ibctech.ca	0:f:b5:80:58:77     fxp0 15s       R
v6.ibctech.ca		0:e:c:6c:e9:62      fxp0 permanent R
v6.ibctech.ca		0:e:c:6c:e9:62      fxp0 permanent R
...etc, etc.

If you don't have DNS configured, or you do not have reverse DNS entries 
for the host IPs you are talking to, then only the IP will be listed above.

> So far I only have a rudimentary IPv6 
> configuration on FreeBSD 7 running and it only sees the IP address, and 
> then only after I ping the other end.  

What you see above is normal functionality of the IPv6 Neighbor 
Discovery Protocol (RFC-4861). The 'neighbor cache' only gets populated 
with entries when IP communication takes place, or you receive/accept a 
router advertisement with a list of prefixes (ndp -p).

The fact that names are not appearing is due to (mis|non) configuration 
of DNS either for the resolver on the box itself, or reverse DNS missing 
for the LAN IPs as stated above.

To add a DNS server in FreeBSD, simply:

# echo "nameserver ip.of.name.server" >> /etc/resolv.conf

> I couldn't find anything in 
> /etc/defaults that seems to address auto discovery.  Is this something I 
> have missed or what? 

Perhaps you are referring to 'Auto Configuration' (RFC-4862)? Neighbor 
Discovery and Auto Configuration perform different tasks, but the former 
is required by the latter.

Can you describe exactly what you want to achieve? Is it only the name 
resolution problem you described above?

Steve