About First-Hop Security
The Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches operate in the Layer 2 domains with technologies such as server virtualization, Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV), and Layer 2 mobility. These devices are sometimes referred to as "first hops", specifically when they are facing end nodes. The First-Hop Security feature provides end node protection and optimizes link operations on IPv6 or dual-stack networks.
First-Hop Security (FHS) is a set of features to optimize IPv6 link operation, and help with scale in large L2 domains. These features provide protection from a wide host of rogue or mis-configured users. You can use extended FHS features for different deployment scenarios, or attack vectors.
The following FHS features are supported:
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IPv6 RA Guard
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DHCPv6 Guard
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IPv6 Snooping
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See Guidelines and Limitations of First-Hop Security for information about enabling this feature. |
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Use the feature dhcp command to enable the FHS features on a switch. |
IPv6 Global Policies
IPv6 global policies provide storage and access policy database services. IPv6 snooping, DHCPv6 guard, and IPv6 RA guard are IPv6 global policies features. Each time IPv6 snooping, DHCPv6 guard, or RA guard is configured globally, the policy attributes are stored in the software policy database. The policy is then applied to an interface, and the software policy database entry is updated to include this interface to which the policy is applied.
Use the hardware access-list tcam region ing-redirect tcam_size command, to configure FHS. You can resize the ing-racl region to allocate space to the ing-redirect region.
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Cisco Nexus 9200, 9300-EX, and 9300-FX/FX2 platform switches, FHS packets take the copp-s-dhcpreq queue for software processing.
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Cisco Nexus 9300, 9500 platform switches, N9K-X9432C-S line card use the class default.
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When you upgrade the Cisco Nexus Series switch to Cisco NX-OS Release 7.0(3)I7(1) using the In-Service Software Upgrades (ISSU), you must reload the Cisco NX-OS box before configuring the port level FHS policies. |
IPv6 First-Hop Security Binding Table
A database table of IPv6 neighbors connected to the device is created from information sources such as IPv6 snooping. This database, or binding table is used by various IPv6 guard features to validate the link-layer address (LLA), the IPv6 address, and prefix binding of the neighbors to prevent spoofing and redirect attacks.