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I thought fe80::whatever was only for link local, and link local was only for 1-1 communication with router for SLAAC.

After you'd get a unique local than thebn would be used for normal routing needs.

Did I get the wrong?

You can use link local for whatever you want, I don't think there's a restriction, is there?

Even though it's rare, I actually do use it if I want to talk to another host on a very specific interface. Sometimes there's multiple paths.

I when to check and I think I get it now, the link-local is routeable (switchable?) but only at the local level, but then you might ask why bother with SLAAC at all then. It's due to router being unable to route anything with a link local origin or destination as they are not globally unique so if you need to talk to anything past layer 2 you need unique-local address (or global).

Yeah, but you can still talk to other hosts on the same link, not just the router, at any layer protocol. Link local addresses are not routable, but if you want to talk on the same network segment, that's fine.

Case in point, when I SSH from my laptop to my desktop using mDNS hostnames, I see “Last connection from: fe80::<something>”.

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