On Aug 30, 2025, at 8:05 PM, Guy Harris <[email protected]> wrote:

> As for the redundancy, which is the result of historical mistakes, currently 
> tcpdump reports errors for IPv6 packets on LINKTYPE_IPV4 and IPv4 packets on 
> LINKTYPE_IPV6, while Wireshark treats LINKTYPE_IPV4 and LINKTYPE_IPV6 as 
> equivalent to LINKTYPE_RAW.  I don't remember any complaints having been made 
> about either behavior, which probably indicates that nobody's ever written 
> non-IPv4 packets with LINKTYPE_IPV4 or non-IPv6 packets with LINKTYPE_IPV6. 
> We probably don't have any need to say anything more about LINKTYPE_IPV4 or 
> LINKTYPE_IPV6

I've decided that LINKTYPE_IPV4 should mean "IPv4 only, IPv6 is an error" and 
LINKTYPE_IPV6 should mean "IPv6 only, IPv4 is an error", and in *any* cases 
where there's *any* chance that the traffic will include both, LINKTYPE_RAW 
should be used.

I've created pages on www.tcpdump.org for all three link layers and updated the 
entries in the I-D to refer to them.  I'll add, as additional references, RFC 
791 and RFC 8200 as appropriate.
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