nanog mailing list archives

Re: ISP customer assignments


From: Dan White <dwhite () olp net>
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 08:42:18 -0500

On 05/10/09 22:53 -0400, Ricky Beam wrote:
On Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:55:35 -0400, Dan White <dwhite () olp net> wrote:
All of the items in the above list are true of DHCP. ...

In an IPv4 world (which is where DHCP lives), it's much MUCH harder to track assignments -- I don't share my DHCP logs with anyone, nor does anyone send theirs to me. From the perspective of remote systems (ie. not on the same network), there is about a 100% chance NAT is involved making it near impossible to individually identify a specific machine, even if it gets the same address every Tuesday when you're at Starbucks for coffee. IPv6 does away with NAT (or it's supposed to); in doing so, the veil is removed and everything that had been hidden from site is now openly displayed. If the "host" part of your address never changes, then you are instantly identifiable everywhere you go, with zero effort, forever.

Use random addresses, and change as often as you like. Why depend on
someone else's DHCP server to provide you the addressing uniqueness you
desire?

--
Dan White
BTC Broadband


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