Blog of Random Thoughts and Pictures

IPv6 a fading away chicken and egg which has the experts scrambling for a Bake-off

June 7th, 2007

IPv6 is quietly fading away as a topic according to the IETF. Wait, wait please read on, the article expresses “this is a good sign for IPv6, and it shows that the closing of the IPv6 working group was a sensible move and that IPv6 is becoming mature” …. “becoming an integrated part of all of the work within the IETF” … “The fact that the focus for IPv6 is on operational issues and integrated IPv4 and IPv6 issues shows that IPv6 has moved into a new phase and is now starting to become a natural part of the daily life of the IETF and the network community as a whole”.
IPv6 For the Rest of Us, does show a slightly different view point highlighting that “there is no demand” for IPv6 right now … but with the advisory issued by ARIN to alert the internet community of “that migration to IPv6 is necessary for any applications that require ongoing availability from ARIN” this demand may change!
And not all is rosie with IPv6, as reported on a number of tech news sites, the elimination of the RH0 header problem which exposes a potential security flaw in IPv6 was front in centre recently.
The initiating presentation on the topic [PDF] is quite interesting.
In more controlled testing there was a recent DHCPv6 Bake Off (March 2007) which appears to have gone very well. As is the purpose of these things a number of issues were identified, with a key question of “What should happen when a client requests a particular address and the server does not agree to the request?” sounding like another big DoS problem, as articluated by John R.