why rtsold ?

[Alan Somers]

On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 8:20 PM Victor Sudakov <vas at mpeks.tomsk.su> wrote:

> Dear Colleagues,
>
> When running FreeBSD as an IPv6 host im SLAAC mode, is
> "rtsold_enable=YES" really necessary? I did not enable rtsold and IPv6
> still works fine only with
>
> fconfig_re0=""
> ifconfig_re0_ipv6="inet6 accept_rtadv"
>
> What would be the point of enabling rtsold then?
>
> --
> Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
> 2:5005/49 at fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
>

The router may send a router advertisement whenever it wants.  That's why
your machine seems to work even without rtsold.  However, SLAAC addresses
expire after a certain amount of time.  rtsold will ask the router for a
new advertisement before your address expires.  You aren't guaranteed to
have problems if you don't run rtsold, but you aren't guaranteed not to
have problems if you don't.  Best to let it run.
-Alan