What is happening to IPv6?

I have read several articles lately on the state of IPv6. Most of them take the position that implementation is moving slowly, and that is just fine. I went to a conference a few weeks ago that gave me a fairly different impression. It brought together people from the US federal government, business, and academia to describe the state of IPv6 in the government, and start a discussion of where to go next. My main interest in the conference was the security issues surrounding IPv6, and of course, there is no serious discussion about the Internet that doesn't include security. However, I did learn some interesting things about the status of IPv6.


At the time, the government was on the verge of announcing that agencies could demonstrate IPv6 capabilty. This basically amounts to the fact that they have a plan in place to only purchase equipment that supports IPv6, although some have pilot programs in place. The DoD is apparently furthest along, but is nowhere near ready to "flip the switch". However, there has been quite a bit of planning and NIST is working on setting standards for testing equipment, that will eventually lead to purchase specifications.

The government, and in particular the DoD, is not very concerned about the increased address space or encryption/authentication features of IPv6. Instead, their interest is in mobile networks, especially the auto-configuration features, and multicast. This is for using dynamic networks on the battlefield, and while they didn't give any details on the subject, it isn't hard to imagine how both features could be used. There is a pretty good article from Linux Journal on IPv6 mobility in Linux, which starts with a really good overview of the principles of using it.

Near the end of the conference, there was a panel discussion which included a couple of government representatives, a guy from Cisco and one from AT&T, and a member of the IETF IPv6 working group. The guys from industry said that there is a steady, and fairly significant increase in the IPv6 network infrastructure. If you live in the US, you are probably used to reading articles that claim deployments are almost non-existant and are surprised to hear this. However, the deployments are happening in Asia primarily, and to a lesser extent in Europe.

I don't know how true it is, but someone at the conference said that the University of Califonia system has more IPv4 addresses than the entire country of China. Even if it isn't the case, the point is well taken. Latecomers to the Internet got the crumbs of the IPv4 address space, and now they are desperate to use IPv6.

This has many implications. The entire set of TCP/IP and related protocols are very loose. In some people's minds, the rollout of IPv6 is an opportunity to get several things right that IPv4 didn't. However, implementations will not all support the same features. The reason for this is that IPv6 has a common header with very little in it other than the source and destination addresses. The new features are in extension headers, which are optional. And the protocols to be used for encryption and authentication are continuing to be developed:

• Security Architecture for IP: RFC1825 obsoleted by RFC2401 obsoleted by RFC4301 (IPSec) and updated by RFC3168


• IP Authentication Header: RFC1826 obsoleted by RFC2402 obsoleted by RFC4302 and RFC4305 obsoleted by RFC4835

The newest of these is dated April, 2007. And none of them specify algorithms or methods, just the requirements for using them. Meanwhile, thousands of routers for IPv6 networks have already been deployed and the number is growing steadily.

The question was raised during the panel discussion of how much assurance agencies will have that the products they purchase will support the requirements that are mandated. The answer was a resounding, "Well ..." The member of the IETF pointed out that they are not a standards committee, but more like the maintainer of the documentation. RFCs have their status upgraded to Standard by concensus. And the Asian and other countries using IPv6 as 'IPv4 with big addresses' are not interested in spending time haggling over features that interfere with their deployments.

But as I said before, my interest was in the security concerns for IPv6. The main ones are the same as in IPv4. To begin with, a very small percentage of exploits go against the IP layer. And security issues for the upper layers of the stack will not change.

But once mobile IPv6 networks with auto-configuration begin to be deployed, there will be vulnerabilities to be dealt with. Of course, the first vulnerability will be admins on the learning curve. Hopefully, these folks will be motivated and supported to get good training early on. To get a taste of actual protocol issues, read the RFC for Secure Neighbor Discovery (SEND) mechanisms.

I certainly hope that the admins don't get stuck with the bulk of the responsibility for security. But the current state of networking products, according to someone who is testing them for the NSA, is that the low level infrastructure (routers, host OSes) is fairly good, but not 100%. Even a little way up the stack, that falls to little, if any, support for IPv6. This includes firewalls and IDSes, and some server applications.

So what has to be handled? Well, the first step is to find the upper level data, such as a TCP header. This means parsing the extension headers, which is a little weird. First, the header type is not in each header, but in the preceeding header. So the first two octets of each extension header are the type of the next header and the length of the current header.

Then there is tunneling. It is possible to tunnel IPv6 in IPv4 or vice versa. What this means for finding the upper level header is that first the IPvX header must be parsed, then the IPvY header. And this could be done more than once in crafted packets. I sure hope that normal traffic at the point of a firewall would not have multiple IPv4 and IPv6 tunnels.

The other issue is the order and number of IPv6 extension headers. Most packets are only allowed to have one of each type of extension header. The exception is the Destinations header, and there may be two of these. Oh, and the order is not mandatory, just recommended.

And what is the status of Realeyes IPv6 support? I have added the capability to find upper level headers in untunneled packets. And there is some capability to parse IPv6 extension headers. In particular, the number of each type of header is validated, and for now the recommended order is treated as mandatory, so a report is issued for packets that don't follow the recommendation.

The common IPv6 header is formatted in playbacks, but there is a hex dump of the extension header data. I will be gradually adding support for tunneling and formatting of the extension header data. It is similar to TCP options, so I don't see the code being difficult. The biggest problem is testing. I configured two hosts on my local network to talk to each other with IPv6, but that is a proof of concept, at best.

So that is my perspective of what is happening with IPv6. I suggest that if you work on networks, you show more than a passing interest in it, because it will probably be a case of hurry up and wait, until all of a sudden we need it yesterday.

Later . . . Jim