Subject: Re: default route and private networks
To: None <tls@rek.tjls.com>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@dsg.stanford.edu>
List: tech-security
Date: 04/14/2005 13:39:24
In message <20050414025638.GA14158@panix.com>Thor Lancelot Simon writes

>> RFC-1122 is a common reference.  If you're _that_ under-informed, how
>> much credence should be given to your opinions on how IPv4 "should"
>> behave?
>
>I don't think David is under-informed; he just hasn't had occasion to
>look at the different canonical host models for IPv4 before, and I doubt
>he was active on our lists the last time the strong host/weak host
>debate came up, since it was several years ago.  

Perhaps so about the history on this list. Nevertheless, surely the
Host Requirements RFCs are crucial piece of backgorund knowledge, for
anyone making strong statements about how IPv4 should behave?


>It is not unreasonable
>to use IPv6 as an analogy here -- but it is important to understand
>that people's reasonable assumptions about v4 behavior both for xmit
>and receive on end hosts do not match the scoping that v6 does, and that
>people have built network and host configurations whose security may
>depend to at least some extent on hosts that do not exhibit v6-like
>scoping when using v4.

hor, that's a very long paragraph that is also one whole sentence.
Bad, bad.  I will quote the opening fragment on its own:


>It is not unreasonable to use IPv6 as an analogy here [...]

And I reply that it *is* unreasonable to use IPv6 as an analogy here,
without (as you say above) *also* knowing what IPv4 specs have to say
about the matter.  THat'd be a dumb thing to do.  Now, I can't tell if
David is acutally doing that here or not; but from the way David
phrased it, it does seem as if he might be. I certainly can't see any
other explanation in David's text; do you?