The 20 bit wide Flow Label field in the IPv6 header is a integral part of the protocol specification, standardized in "RFC 2460":http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2460 The field may be used to mark sequences of packets for which the sender request special handling at intermediate routers. The standard explicitly does not define the what, it exemplary provides two examples (real-time and non-default quality of service routing) and that's all. At the specification time nobody was in the ability to specify how this field may be used in the future or may not used for. As so often the time should breed possible use cases. Good designs are often - not always - characterized by a unseen potential which is discovered later on. One famous example is the C++ template system - the powerful scope was identified after the language was already released: "Modern C++ Design: Generic Programming and Design Patterns Applied":http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0201704315/modecdesi-20

Time goes by and the use cases are still rare for Flow Label. This may be founded in the low diffusion of IPv6 at the time of writing or because larger carriers already use Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) beside the common 5-tuple used to classify a packet flow (later on is a rare exception in the core). The 5-tupel has it own problems such as fragmentation or next header parsing due to the fact that the port information is at the transport layer. Anyway, use case questions accumulate over time and an I-D address some possible use cases of this 3-tuple {source address, destination address, flow label}: "Survey of proposed use cases for the IPv6 flow label":http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hu-flow-label-cases-00 The I-D is worth reading!