static and dynamic multipoint ipv6 tunnel

[sarahr202]

Hi everybody.

How is everyone doing?

My book says " the dynamic forwarding logic requires more work per packet as compared to point-point tunnels which is one of the main reason multipoint tunnels are best used for less frequent traffic while point-to-point tunnels are best suited for more frequent traffic"

In case of multipoint ipv6 tunnel, router has to drive the tunnel destination ip which is encoded in ipv6 address . What  other work is performed on a packet when it comes to multipoint ipv6 tunnel which is not performed in case of static ipv6 over ip tunnel ?

thanks and have a great day

[Peter Paluch · Accepted solution]

Hi Sarah,

Apart from "extracting" the embedded IPv4 address from the IPv6 address and placing it into a newly constructed IPv4 encapsulating header, I do not think there is any more significant work involved for multipoint tunnels. It is true that with static point-to-point tunnels, you can already have that header prepared beforehand in memory for all packets - you just use it again and again. With dynamic tunnels, you have first to derive the destination IPv4 address and then place it into a new IPv4 header but even this can be done in software so that the difference in the amount of work is negligible.

Best regards,

Peter