nanog mailing list archives

Re: NIST IPv6 document


From: Joe Greco <jgreco () ns sol net>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 20:18:20 -0600 (CST)


On Jan 5, 2011, at 9:17 PM, Joe Greco wrote:

It has nothing to do with "security by obscurity".
=20
You may wish to re-read what Joe was saying - he was positing sparse =
addres=3D
sing as a positive good because it will supposedly make it more =
difficult f=3D
or attackers to locate endpoints in the first place, i.e., security =
through=3D
obscurity.  I think that's an invalid argument.
=20
That's not necessarily security through obscurity.  A client that just
picks a random(*) address in the /64 and sits on it forever could be
reasonably argued to be doing a form of security through obscurity.
However, that's not the only potential use!  A client that initiates
each new outbound connection from a different IP address is doing
something Really Good.
=20
If hosts start cycling their addresses that frequently, don't you run =
the risk of that becoming a form of DOS on your router's ND tables?

It could, but given the changes we've seen in the last twenty years, I
have no reason to expect that this won't become practical and commonplace
in IPv6.  I think it is a matter of finding the right enabling 
technologies, and as others have noted, what currently exists for IPv6
isn't necessarily the best-of-breed.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.


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