RFC 8981 and the EVPN Scaling: Managing IPv6 Host Route Proliferation in Data Centers

IPv6 Temporary Address Extensions for Stateless Address Autoconfiguration (SLAAC), notably RFC 8981 [1], are pivotal for user privacy, enabling dynamic, temporary IPv6 addresses with randomized interface identifiers. While beneficial for end-user anonymity, their pervasive adoption in modern operating systems, including macOS and Windows, presents a substantial scalability challenge for Ethernet VPN (EVPN) data center infrastructures serving SLAAC-enabled IPv6 hosts. This paper analyzes the architectural implications of these privacy features on critical network device resources, such as routing, forwarding, and neighbor tables. Drawing from empirical observations within a large-scale data center environment, hosting RFC8981-compliant IPv6 devices, we demonstrate how the proliferation of multiple IPv6 addresses per host precipitates an unforeseen surge in BGP EVPN Type-2 host routes. We identify key contributing factors to premature resource exhaustion and propose operational and architectural considerations for future large-scale IPv6-enabled EVPN data center deployments.