Re: 64-bit identifiers

[Jim Bound <seamus@bit-net.com>]

Bob,

I thought about where your coming from after Ran/Brian's mail.  But I
don't think we can say this works if public EUIs are used but not with
Temp addrs.  I don't think that will fly with the operators as that is yet
more to manage with yet another "if case".


/jim


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
>   
> 
>