Google's silent on NDP switches.

dE_logics · Advocate Joined: 02 Jan 2009 Posts: 2253 Location: $TERM

As we know, switches work on the logical link layer. For Ethernet, it's ARP; but now NDP has arrived, but I cant find any switches which mentions they support the protocol.

Is it that it's not adopted by any hardware yet?
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Genone · Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 10:12 am Post subject:

Well, given that NDP seems to be IPv6 only I'd assume that any switch that claims to support IPv6 also supports NDP, and these days that should be true for any new device. Like most switches won't explicitly state that they support ARP as it will generally be assumed as given. Also maybe NDP isn't the best search term, e.g. on a product info page for a HP switch it was listed as "RFC 4861 IPv6 Neighbor Discovery".

dE_logics · Advocate Joined: 02 Jan 2009 Posts: 2253 Location: $TERM

Thanks for the info! That cleared things up.
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wswartzendruber · Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2013 3:04 am Post subject:

You don't need an NDP-aware switch for IPv6 to function. But an NDP-aware switch can probably make things faster.

EDIT: ARP is kind of like a layer 2.5 protocol. It maps the second and third layers together. NDP is actually a subset of ICMPv6 that seemingly operates through layer two devices. However, you can also filter these packets and route them at the third layer.