Anycast

An anycast address is a global unicast address assigned to a set of interfaces, typically on different nodes. IPv6 anycast is used for a network multi-homed to several ISPs that have multiple connections to each other

• One-to-nearest (allocated from unicast address space)

• Multiple devices share the same address

• All anycast nodes should provide uniform service

• Source devices send packets to anycast address

• Routers decide on closest device to reach that destination

• Suitable for load balancing and content delivery services