NIST IPv6 document

Thu Jan 6 02:16:18 UTC 2011

On Jan 6, 2011, at 8:57 AM, Joe Greco wrote:

> The switch from IPv4 to IPv6 itself is such a change; it renders random trolling through IP space much less productive.

And renders hinted trolling far more productive/necessary, invariably leading to increased strain on already-brittle/-overloaded DNS, whois, route servers, et. al., not to mention ND/multicast abuse.

> We should not lose sight of the fact that this is generally a very positive feature; calls for packing IPv6 space more tightly serve merely to marginalize that win.

Far from being a 'win', I believe it's either neutral or a net negative, due to the above implications.

If we're looking at a near-future world filled with spimes, where every molecule in every nanomanufactured soda can has its own IPv6 address it uses to communicate via NFC or ZigBee or whatever during the assembly/recycling process, unnecessarily wasting IPv6 space isn't an optimal strategy.

The alleged security benefits of sparse IPv6 addressing plans are a canard, IMHO.

> We should be figuring out ways to make /64's work optimally, because in ten years everyone's going to have gigabit Internet links and we're
> going to need all the tricks we can muster to make an attacker's job harder.

These are diametrically-opposed, mutually-exclusive goals, IMHO.

All in all, IPv6 is a net security negative.  It has all the same problems of IPv4, plus new, IPv6-specific problems - *in hex*.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roland Dobbins <rdobbins at arbor.net> // <http://www.arbornetworks.com>

Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid, with millions
of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but
just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.

			  -- Alan Kay