> I totally appreciate Alain's concern for cable modem devices > with limited memory for IPv6 but the problem is that IPv6 > community decided as far back as 1998 with RFC 2401 that > IPSec is mandatory for IPv6.
The events of 1998 are irrelevant. The fact is that this website <http://www.ipv6ready.org/about_phase2_test.html> clearly does not consider IPsec to be part of the IPv6 core protocols and therefore lots of implementations will not have it. Cable boxes are not much different from general purpose computers running Linux. In fact, they may use Linux for all I know. In any case, they are complex devices and if you looked at an architecture diagram for them they would like rather like a network in a box with many functions on separate chips (or areas of an FPGA) all communicating with various internal protocols and busses. But IPv6 is not just for devices like that. It was also intended to be something that could be implemented on embedded devices that often use 8-bit CPUs with the IP stack written in carefully handcoded assembly language. TINI is an example of such a device but there are hundreds of them out there and manufacturers continue to introduce new 8-bit microcontrollers all the time. If you have any contacts with Yokogawa in Japan, they have a lot of experience in this area and will be able to give a better idea of how common it is to implement IPv6 without IPsec. WIDE people may also know more about this. --Michael Dillon -------------------------------------------------------------------- IETF IPv6 working group mailing list ipv6@ietf.org Administrative Requests: http://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ipv6 --------------------------------------------------------------------
