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An anycast address, according to RFC 2526 (Reserved IPv6 Subnet Anycast Addresses, March 1993), is a "reserved address in IPv6 that is assigned to one or more network interfaces that may belong to different physical nodes with the property that a packet sent to an anycast address is routed to the nearest interface having that address, according to the routing protocols' measure of distance." Another feature is that an anycast address looks the same as a normal unicast address. Nodes sending packets to an anycast address don't necessarily need to know that it is an anycast address.