nanog mailing list archives

Re: NIST IPv6 document


From: Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2011 15:46:49 -0800


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

It has nothing to do with "security by obscurity".

You may wish to re-read what Joe was saying - he was positing sparse addres=
sing as a positive good because it will supposedly make it more difficult f=
or attackers to locate endpoints in the first place, i.e., security through=
obscurity.  I think that's an invalid argument.

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.

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?

Owen



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