On 10 dec 2007, at 17:31, Dave Thaler wrote:
Can anyone point me to the RFC that states that IP stacks are
supposed
to be unable to use this space?
There's no RFC that defines how to use it. That is, it's neither
unicast nor multicast nor broadcast.
We know what broadcast and multicast are, and class E space (with the
exception of 255.255.255.255/32) isn't that. So it must be unicast
space.
How would
receiving a 240/4 packet be worse than any other packet?
For example, if your firewall software were somehow incapable of
having filter rules for the 240/4 space where it could for other
addresses, that would be a clear security hole. Any time you have a
business-critical operational tool (whether IDS, firewall, traffic
engineering, or whatever else) that would refuse to accept
configuration for such an address, receiving 240/4 would clearly be
worse than for any other packet.
How could anyone build a security device that is incapable of
filtering out packets that use 1/16th of the address space?
And obviously if a host is updated to work with 240/4 it would also be
updated to apply normal filters to this space if this wasn't possible
before.
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