SKIPPING AND PARSING INTERNET PROTOCOL VERSION 6 (IPv6) EXTENSION HEADERS TO REACH UPPER LAYER HEADERS

Embodiments presented herein describe techniques for parsing an Internet Protocol version 6 frame and skipping extension headers of the frame. A configurable skip list is provided that specifies extension headers for a networking device to skip when parsing the frame. The networking device examines "next header" fields of each extension header to determine a next extension header in the chain. If the next extension header matches an extension header in the skip list, the networking device iterates to the next header in the chain until the end of the chain (or an extension header that does not contain a match in the list) is reached.