[ipv6hackers] IPv6 security (slides and training)

[Leinweber, James]

Fred Bovy:
> This transition to IPv6 more and more reminds me the Y2KŠ Which was just a
> non-event!

I think that's an unhelpful analogy.

  - Y2K was a non-event for consumers

  - Y2K was a very expensive event for businesses, involving much work by
     DBA's and application programmers

  - Y2K had a hard deadline

In contrast, IPv4 exhaustion and the  IPv6 transition

  * doesn't make the IPv4 internet stop working
     (whereas failure to act on Y2K caused applications to fail)

  * doesn't have a hard deadline

  * is more pervasive
     (You can't limit the impact to your DBA's and app developers)

  * is less expensive than Y2k
      (you can support IPv6 on your front end without ripping
       IPv4 out of your back end;
       a lot of your equipment and OS's have already picked up
       IPv6 support as a side effect of your normal replace/upgrade
       cycles;
       converting apps to support IPv6 is less work than Y2K, because
       we store fewer addresses than dates and manipulate them much
       less.)

  * is more visible to consumers
     (OK, so dual-stack web browsers with happy eyeballs and native
      dual-stack uplinks are pretty invisible.       
      Negotiating v6 access with your ISP, replacing your wifi and
      broadband gear with v6 capable stuff, and the vagaries of
      watching your applications fail to cope with tunnels and carrier
      NAT are highly visible.)

The analogy I have been using in my own presentations is that IPv6 is
like the conversion from analog to digital TV (at least in the US);
new gear all around for mostly the same content.

-- Jim Leinweber
State Laboratory of Hygiene, University of Wisconsin - Madison
<jim.leinweber at slh.wisc.edu>       phone +1 608 221 6281
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