Subject: RE: Identification

From: "Bound, Jim" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 02:10:59 -0500

Dave,

Assuming nothing.  Asking.  Setting a model. If we all agree on base
principles/assumptions we can move forward. 

But I agree with your interpretations except for one I think?

>> But we cannot hard code identifiers in silicon? 

>There is no _technical_ reason this couldn't be done. People concerned
about
>privacy might get uptight about this though.  

We don't want people to put identifiers in my CD player EIA interfaces
if they exist within the context of location.  The stateless property of
the IPv6 architecture permits that can be changed by processing on the
local network.
Also we want my CD player to be able to support a self healing link
partition if I change the IPv6 scope of identifier, or merge two links
to one link local domain as two examples.

Ergo XXX Electronics cannot burn IPv6 addresses in their chips and
assume permanent identification.  Even identifiers are chaotic and IPv6
architecture implies this is not technically wise.

In addition to privacy nut-cakes who are worried about my CD player and
refridgerator being attacked by the boogie man :---)

/jim

---

From: Tim Chown <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 07:30:38 +0000

> to one link local domain as two examples.

Before long that piece of CD hifi is more likely to be a wireless MP3
player which could download new tracks from anywhere.   But if you are
constrained to the home I wouldn't want my appliances using well-known
MAC prefixes either else an inventory of household electronics is on
the wire as my TV/TiVo accesses programme info or my CD accesses the cddb
or my fridge auto-orders more beer.  Of course most households have these
items, but the MAC address might identify high-end products - so it's
not just a concern of privacy nut-cakes :)

(BTW, for my CD or MP3 player to query cddb to lookup track info the lack
of a stateless DNS discovery method means you need a DHCP client in your 
MP3 player...)

Tim

---

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 17:37:01 +1000

Will RFID map into V6 in a sensible manner?

If there was even a restricted subset mapping, what kinds of things could we
do with it?

-George

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 23:46:16 -0800

Jim,

On Sunday, March 16, 2003, at 11:10  PM, Bound, Jim wrote:
>> There is no _technical_ reason this couldn't be done. People 
>> concerned about
> if they exist within the context of location.

As I said in my previous message, identity is independent of location.  
Reachability of identifiers is dependent on location.

> The stateless property of

None of these are identity issues, they are location issues.

> assume permanent identification.

Given current IPv6 addressing architecture, this is very true -- it 
would be very silly.

However, if they only burned the lower 64 bits of an IPv6 address into 
their chips as permanent identifiers, there is no issue provided those 
identifiers are globally unique.

> Even identifiers are chaotic and IPv6

In the context of routing, IPv6 treats the lower 64 bits as opaque 
values, does it not?

Rgds,
-drc

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 09:55:03 +0100 (CET)

> identifiers are globally unique.

Even assuming they come out of the factory with unique addresses
(I've heard stories from people getting 5 cards all with the same
address) how long is this going to stay unique after my little brother
types "man ifconfig"?

Sure, it's possible to repair all these problems, but why exactly were
we doing this in the first place again...? Hardware addresses make bad
identifiers. Just give me 64 bytes of NVRAM so I can burn in the
identifier of my choice.

---

From: Peter Tattam <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 20:09:26 +1100 (EST)

As long as they are unique enough within a site, I can't see a problem.  All
you want is to not be mistaken for someone else in the quagmire of the internet
soup.  A site is a pretty good approximation.  The GUID is only a few more bits
of uniqueness.

Peter

P.S.  waiting for Jim's beer server to arrive on the back doorstep.  We had a
30 degrees celsius day here :)

--
Peter R. Tattam                            [email-masked]
Managing Director,    Trumpet Software International Pty Ltd
Hobart, Australia,  Ph. +61-3-6245-0220,  Fax +61-3-62450210

---

From: Iljitsch van Beijnum <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 10:42:56 +0100 (CET)

> soup.  A site is a pretty good approximation.  The GUID is only a few more bits

What we need here is something that uniquely identifies one end of a
transport session for at least the duration of such a session (for which
there is no clear upper bound). The lower 64 bits of an IP address can't
be such an identifier because several hosts on the internet can use the
same value for the lower 64 bits of their address at the same time and
there is no way to make sure they won't try to communicate with the same
host at the same time.

We have duplicate address detection on local links for a reason...

---

From: David Conrad <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2003 08:31:34 -0800

> identifiers. Just give me 64 bytes of NVRAM so I can burn in the

And how will you be assuring that 64 bytes is globally unique?

Rgds,
-drc