US Patent 7941512 Use of IPv6 in access networks

An embodiment method may comprise establishing a link layer connection to an access server, obtaining a management address, wherein the management address is at least one of an IPv6 and an IPv4 address, obtaining a TFTP server address, wherein the server address is either IPv6 or IPv4, downloading a configuration file from the TFTP server, registering with the access server as IPv6 capable, maintaining an IP address/prefix-MAC mapping database, and determining whether the IPv6 address belongs to a particular media access control (MAC) address based on the IP address/prefix-MAC mapping database.