Re: 64-bit identifiers

[Peter Tattam <peter@jazz-1.trumpet.com.au>]

I was attempting to only referr to the short lived identity properties of such
identifiers for the purposes of multihoming over the lifetime of a connection.

The privacy debate, while important, should not necessarily be relevant to the
discussion I was attempting to promote.

Peter

On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Bob Hinden wrote:

> Ran,
> 
> >The existence of the Privacy Address Configuration specification
> >for IPv6 means that the low-order 64-bits CAN NOT uniquely identify
> >a host.  Prior to then, using the low-order 64-bits (as proposed
> >by original 8+8/GSE) might have worked.  That approach cannot work
> >given the current state of specs.  Note well that the "privacy
> >extension" spec (sic) is being widely implemented and deployed in
> >end-systems (e.g. Windows XP).
> 
> IPv6 nodes can have long lived 64 bit interface identifiers (usually 
> created from hardware tokens) and temporary interface identifiers per 
> RFC3041.  Most implementations will support both types as they serve 
> different purposes.  There is a bit in the interface identifier that 
> indicates whether it is a global or local identifier.  As you point out the 
> global identifiers could be used with an 8+8/GSE type scheme, while the 
> temporary addresses would be harder to use.
> 
> >Now one could postulate a different identifer that could be used
> >in things like Protocol Control Blocks to bind session state
> >and identity (in lieu of using IP addresses as at present).  There
> >would need to be some ability to map to/from that identifier to
> >other kinds of identifiers (perhaps IP Addresses, FQDNs) for
> >this to be deployable, as near as I can tell.  There is some work
> >within the IRTF NSRG examining the possibility of adding such
> >identifiers to the Internet Architecture, but that's research
> >not engineering for now.
> 
> Based on our experience with global IPv6 interface identifiers, I suspect 
> that any new scheme using global identifiers will have to deal with privacy 
> issues to allow for anonymous communication.
> 
> Bob
>   
> 
> 
> 

--
Peter R. Tattam                            peter@trumpet.com
Managing Director,    Trumpet Software International Pty Ltd
Hobart, Australia,  Ph. +61-3-6245-0220,  Fax +61-3-62450210