File formats:

Status:

INFORMATIONAL

Authors:

Q. Hu
B. Carpenter

Stream:

INDEPENDENT

Cite this RFC: TXT  |  XML  |   BibTeX

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.17487/RFC6294

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Abstract

The IPv6 protocol includes a flow label in every packet header, but this field is not used in practice. This paper describes the flow label standard and discusses the implementation issues that it raises. It then describes various published proposals for using the flow label and shows that most of them are inconsistent with the standard. Methods to address this problem are briefly reviewed. We also question whether the standard should be revised. This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes.

For the definition of Status, see RFC 2026.

For the definition of Stream, see RFC 8729.