What happens to overlapping IPv6 fragments?

• A. They are dropped.
• B. They are reassembled and processed.
• C. They are queued for later reassembly.
• D. They are delivered with errors.

Answer: (A)

In IPv6 reassembly, the data from all fragments must line up exactly to reconstruct the original packet. If two fragments claim overlapping byte ranges, there’s ambiguity about which bytes should be kept. To avoid delivering a corrupted or inconsistent payload, the protocol requires the reassembly process to fail and all related fragments to be discarded. That means the fragments never make it to the upper-layer data, and the host will typically treat the packet as lost (potentially signaling an error to the sender). This strict rule helps maintain data integrity and security when dealing with fragmented traffic.