Anycast Addresses

An IPv6 anycast address is an address that is assigned to more than one interface. Typically, the address belongs to different nodes. A packet that is sent to an anycast address is routed to the nearest interface that has that address, according to the routing protocol's measure of distance.

Anycast addresses can be used as part of a route sequence. Thus, a node can select which of several Internet service providers that the node wants to carry its traffic. This capability is sometimes called source-selected policies. You implement this capability by configuring anycast addresses to identify the set of routers that belongs to Internet service providers. For example, you can configure one anycast address per Internet service provider. You can use the anycast addresses as intermediate addresses in an IPv6 routing header. Then the packet is delivered by a particular provider or is delivered by a sequence of providers. You can also use anycast addresses to identify the set of routers that are attached to a particular subnet. You can also use anycast addresses to identify the set of routers that provide entry into a particular routing domain.

You can locate anycast addresses from the unicast address space by using any of the defined unicast address formats. Thus, anycast addresses are syntactically indistinguishable from unicast addresses. When you assign a unicast address to more than one interface, you turn the unicast address into an anycast address. However, you must explicitly configure the nodes to which the address is assigned in order to know that the address is an anycast address.