RFC 2469: A Caution On The Canonical Ordering Of Link-Layer Addresses

In plain English — editorial summary, not part of the RFC

Protocols such as ARP and Neighbor Discovery have data fields that contain link-layer addresses. In order to interoperate properly, a sender setting such a field must insure that the receiver extracts those bits and interprets them correctly. In most cases, such fields must be in "canonical form". Unfortunately, not all LAN adaptors are consistent in their use of canonical form, and implementations may need to explicitly bit swap individual bytes in order to obtain the correct format. This document provides information to implementors to help them avoid the pitfall of using non-canonical forms when canonical forms are required. This memo provides information for the Internet community.

Document record

Document ID

RFC2469

Published

December 1998

Authors

T. Narten; C. Burton

Status

INFORMATIONAL

Stream

Legacy

Area

—

Pages

5

Also known as

—

• Read the full RFC text →
• Plain text version
• IETF Datatracker history
• DOI: 10.17487/RFC2469

Topics

• address
• resolution
• protocol
• data
• fields

Related documents

Ranked automatically by shared keywords, IETF area and stream — not by editorial selection.

• RFC 1620Internet Architecture Extensions for Shared MediaCurrent

  May 1994

• RFC 1931Dynamic RARP Extensions for Automatic Network Address AcquisitionCurrent

  April 1996

• RFC 1868ARP Extension - UNARPCurrent

  November 1995

• RFC 2269Using the MARS Model in non-ATM NBMA NetworksCurrent

  January 1998

• RFC 2225Classical IP and ARP over ATMUpdated

  April 1998

• RFC 1971IPv6 Stateless Address AutoconfigurationObsoleted

  August 1996

• RFC 1735NBMA Address Resolution Protocol (NARP)Current

  December 1994

• RFC 1577Classical IP and ARP over ATMObsoleted

  January 1994

Also filed under

• INFORMATIONAL
• 1998
• Legacy stream