On 08/10/2014 20:50, Pierre Pfister wrote:
> Hello Brian
> 
> Please find my answer inline.
> 
> Le 8 oct. 2014 à 02:32, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpen...@gmail.com> a 
> écrit :
> 
>> On 08/10/2014 12:14, James Woodyatt wrote:
>>
>> (quoting draft-ietf-homenet-prefix-assignment-00)
>>
>>>   prefix.  If no ULA prefix can be found in stable storage, it MUST be
>>>   randomly generated, or generated from hardware specific values.
>> That sentence is not OK. It should be:
>>
>> If no ULA prefix can be found in stable storage, it MUST be generated
>> as specified in [RFC4193].
> 
> The point was to have a pseudo-random algorithm that always generates the 
> same ULA.
> Stable storage can be used, but on most crappy home routers, writing on the 
> SSD too much will kill it in a few thousands writes.

There is nothing in RFC 4193 that prevents saving the generated ULA in
stable storage for future use; so I think you need to be clearer that
when a ULA is generated, it SHOULD be stored for future use (until the
next factory reset). I don't see why that generates more than a very few
writes to SSD.

> [RFC4193] states:
> 3.2.1.  Locally Assigned Global IDs
> 
>    Locally assigned Global IDs MUST be generated with a pseudo-random
>    algorithm consistent with [RANDOM].
> 
> If remembering the ULA prefix and using it again and again (using stable 
> storage) is OK, I don’t see why we would need cryptographic pseudo-randomness 
> here.
> And actually that’s even worse. Why would a cryptographic pseudo-random 
> function would be used with a *known* seed. 
> The ULA doesn’t need to be secret. It just needs to be random enough to avoid 
> collisions.

Well, yes, but randomness is randomness, i.e. all values are equally likely.
It's really the same thing. I think the assumption was that any box capable
of generating a ULA would already have something better than rand() built in
for other reasons.

> My point here is that if we conform to RFC4193, we lose the stability of the 
> generated ULA, and IMHO we win nothing.

But if you deviate from the standard you need to say so explicitly.
"This procedure deviates from [RFC4193] because...".

> Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think using hardware specific values as seed 
> is perfectly fine with the collision-avoidance requirement.

I would expect so, and I'm not against what you propose, it just needs
to be clearly documented.

    Brian

> Cheers,
> 
> Pierre
> 
>>> The requirements keywords in this section make for a pretty serious interop
>>> clash with Thread networks <http://threadgroup.org/>, which generate their
>>> own ULA prefix based on a method defined by its current conventions.
>> I sincerely hope that method conforms to RFC4193.
>>
>>    Brian
>>
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> 
> 

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