Obtaining a Router Advertisement

The next phase of autoconfiguration involves obtaining a router advertisement or determining that no routers are present. If routers are present, the routers send router advertisements that specify what type of autoconfiguration a host should perform.

Routers send router advertisements periodically. However, the delay between successive advertisements is generally longer than a host that performs autoconfiguration can wait. To quickly obtain an advertisement, a host sends one or more router solicitations to the all-routers multicast group.