We engineer embedded systems (electronics & software), running our own OS with LWIP (a network stack). The device is configured to be IPv6 only (means: no IPv4 is available). These embedded systems run a webserver. A browser must be able to open web pages served by them. Unfortunately, Chrome, Firefox and others do NOT support link local IPv6 addresses as URLs (see e.g. Mozilla and W3C).
Our embedded systems will be connected to the existing network infrastructure (Ethernet). Today, most of our customers networks do not have proper IPv6 setup. Namely, no IPv6 router is available and therefore, our embedded systems and the customers computers (Windows, Linux, etc.) will only have a "link local address" (LLA). As stated above, using LLA is not possible with most browsers.
To workaround this, the best solution we can think of is to 'advertise' a prefix to let all computers and our embedded systems generate "unique local addresses" (ULA). The problem is that for some (most?) customers, it won't be easy to convince their IT to reconfigure their network for IPv6 and setup their router to advertise such a prefix in the near future. Therefore, we came up with the following idea: Let our embedded system send out router advertisements (RAs) propagating a prefix like FDxx:xxxx:xxxx::xxxx/64. With that solution, all hosts in the same network will automatically create ULAs and thus every computers browser will be able to connect to our embedded systems. (Note: The idea is that all our embedded systems propagate exactly the same prefix)
Waht do you think about that idea? Specifically:
- It's a common use case that several of our embedded systems will be added to the same network. Therefore, multiple systems will send out RAs with the same prefix. So far, Googling and reading RFCs, I coulnd't find any statement whether it's allowed to have more than one "router" sending out RAs with the same prefix. Is it allowed? Is it considered to be "ok" doing that?
- Our embedded systems are not really "router devices". In fact, these are "automation devices" which control motors, actors and sensors. Is it "ok" that non-router devices send out RAs?
- Also: We's send out RAs ONLY to cause all hosts in the network to generate a ULA. We effectively do NOT want any host to use our embedded systems as router/gateway. Is that ok?