CurrentINFORMATIONALIETF stream

RFC 7707: Network Reconnaissance in IPv6 Networks

In plain English — editorial summary, not part of the RFC

IPv6 offers a much larger address space than that of its IPv4 counterpart. An IPv6 subnet of size /64 can (in theory) accommodate approximately 1.844 * 10^19 hosts, thus resulting in a much lower host density (#hosts/#addresses) than is typical in IPv4 networks, where a site typically has 65,000 or fewer unique addresses. As a result, it is widely assumed that it would take a tremendous effort to perform address-scanning attacks against IPv6 networks; therefore, IPv6 address-scanning attacks have been considered unfeasible. This document formally obsoletes RFC 5157, which first discussed this assumption, by providing further analysis on how traditional address-scanning techniques apply to IPv6 networks and exploring some additional techniques that can be employed for IPv6 network reconnaissance.

Document record

Document ID
RFC7707
Published
March 2016
Authors
F. Gont; T. Chown
Status
INFORMATIONAL
Stream
IETF
Area
ops
Pages
38
Also known as
Obsoletes:
RFC 5157

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The document record above — title, authors, date, status, stream, area, relationships, DOI and errata — is imported verbatim from the public RFC Editor index. The “in plain English” section is editorial: written by The metasystema editorial team, not part of the RFC. Where the two differ, the RFC text governs.

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canonical URL: /rfc/7707-network-reconnaissance-in-ipv6-networks