Busting Myths – IPv6 Link Local Next Hop into BGP
In some publications it is mentioned that a link local next-hop can’t be used when redistributing routes into BGP because routers receiving the route will not know what to do with the next-hop. That is one of the reason why HSRPv2 got support for global IPv6 addresses. One such scenario is described in this link.
The topology used for this post is the following.
I have just setup enough of the topology to prove that it works with the next-hop, so I won’t be running any pings and so on. The routers R1 and R2 have a static route for the network behind R3 and R4.
ipv6 route 2001:DB8:100::/48 GigabitEthernet0/1 FE80::5:73FF:FEA0:1
When routing towards a link local address, the exit interface must be specified. R1 then runs BGP towards R5, notice that I’m not using next-hop-self.
router bgp 100 bgp router-id 1.1.1.1 bgp log-neighbor-changes neighbor 2001:DB8:1::5 remote-as 100 ! address-family ipv6 redistribute static neighbor 2001:DB8:1::5 activate exit-address-family
If we look in the BGP RIB, we can see that the route is installed with a link local next-hop.
R1#sh bgp ipv6 uni BGP table version is 2, local router ID is 1.1.1.1 Status codes: s suppressed, Continue reading

VMware shuffles execs and ponders vCloud Air's future, all in advance of VMworld.
Business and the infrastructure can finaly evolve in parallel.