How to query IPv6 NDP (neighbor discovery protocol) table for a specific neighbor

Question

I am using Linux and trying to figure out how to query (via an API) the NDP table for a specific entry. The only example I have found so far (in the source for iproute2) uses Netlink and gets the entire table. Is there a way to query Netlink for a specific IPv6 addr on a specific interface? Or is there a different way than using Netlink that I should be going about doing it?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, this isn't possible in the Linux kernel as of version 3.6. There was a patch someone submitted back in 2010 to add such a feature, but it was never merged into the kernel code base. You have to pull the entire neighbor table into user space and then do the searching of it there.