Source Routing and IPv6: Source routing is still a bad idea.

The more people think there is something special about IPv6, the more they discover that IPv6 has the same problems that occurred with IPv4.

Source routing was a bad idea with IPv4. After two researchers studied source routing with IPv6 they came to the conclusion that source routing was a bad idea with IPv6. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Yet, there were many articles that came out that panicked about the latest IPv6 security wrinkle. The obvious solution was the same that came to mind with IPv4 — disable this feature.

This really shouldn’t be a surprise. I think the initial research was valuable, after which engineers should have noted that source routing with IPv6 should be disabled by default, as it is with IPv4. This should be included in best current practices documents. But the multiple media reports were unncessary.

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