Subject: Re: Why IPv6 is a must?

From: "John Stracke" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 16:27:12 -0500

>That's exactly why you want NAT/firewalling and other existing 
mechanisms.

Red herring alert: firewalling and NAT are orthogonal.  Many NATs include 
a firewall, but that's a market decision, not a technical necessity.

>These are devices that do not require global addressability. 

Think water meters.  Utility companies would love to be able to stop sending out expensive 
humans just to read one dial at each customer each month.  You *could* 
have a reverse proxy in your home NAT, but that gets harder to 
standardize; "does customer X have a compatible NAT?" is a harder question 
than "does customer X have an IPv6 network?".  Besides, if you've got an 
end-to-end connection to the meter, it's easier to verify that the 
customer isn't munging the data in order to reduce their bill.

>In fact they
>SHOULD NOT be globally addressable.

Why not? If you've got proper security, you can make them available to the 
right people, and block them from the wrong people.

/==========================================================\
|John Stracke                   |Principal Engineer        |
[email-masked]  |Incentive Systems, Inc.   |
|http://www.incentivesystems.com|My opinions are my own.   |
|==========================================================|
|News flash: Linux now implements RFC-1149, IP over Carrier|
|Pigeon!                                                   |
\==========================================================/

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 02:24:11 +0100

John Stracke writes:

> Utility companies would love to be able to stop
> sending out expensive humans just to read one
> dial at each customer each month.

Where I live, they already have.  The new meters are individually addressable
and will report the consumption they record on demand from a central controller.
They don't require any special wiring; I was told that they use the pipes of the
water system to communicate with the controller--apparently the usable bandwidth
of that channel is enough to allow the very limited communication required by
the application.

Of course, with low-cost IP dialtone or something similar, such a device could
be connected to the Internet.  I would not want it to be a device that could
accept commands to turn off the water or some such, because of the danger of
abuse, but certainly reporting the water consumption seems quite reasonable.

One can imagine the same for soft-drink machines, copying machines, and all
sorts of other appliances.  Right now some of them already work in this way,
except that, like the water meter, they rely on out-of-band communication
methods (from the Internet point of view).

---

From: Michael Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 23:57:28 -0500

>>>>> "John" == John Stracke <[email-masked]> writes:
    John> Think water meters.  Utility companies would love to be able to
    John> stop sending out expensive
    John> humans just to read one dial at each customer each month.  You *could*
    John> have a reverse proxy in your home NAT, but that gets harder to
    John> standardize; "does customer X have a compatible NAT?" is a harder question
    John> than "does customer X have an IPv6 network?".  Besides, if you've

  And, given shipworm, if the water meter sees no router advertisements, but
notices DHCP, it does that, and does either IPv6-over-UDP-through-NAT, or
just plain 6to4 if possible. You run IPsec over that with a manual keys that is
configured into the meter when it was installed.

  As you say - the water company does want security.

  Why would anyone pay for this? Well, not for water or electricity in these
parts, but in places where either is scarce, you need this to provide
variable water/electricity rates (In most places in Canada a "Hydro" bill is
for electricity, which speaks for the abundance of one leading to the
abundance of the other...)

]       ON HUMILITY: to err is human. To moo, bovine.           |  firewalls  [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works, Ottawa, ON    |net architect[
] [email-masked] http://www.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca/ |device driver[
] panic("Just another NetBSD/notebook using, kernel hacking, security guy");  [