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• May 21, 2003 •
Ok, I will start by saying that I respect Chris Pirillo as a leading newsletter publisher, but I have to question his latest rant.
In his Windows Daily GnomeREPORT of May 20, he writes:
"Does the Windows firewall protect you from all incoming traffic? Not if it's IPv6! While it's not much of a threat today, I can easily see it turning into one tomorrow. Their solution: 'To work around this behavior, obtain firewall software that can filter and block IPv6 traffic.' How come nobody warned me about this? Why isn't the tech press all over this serious oversight?! And, most importantly, when (if ever) will a patch be issued to bring the software up-to-date? Seriously, you might wanna tell your friends about this 'little' technicality. Ten to one says Microsoft will never share this bit of news with the world. Of course, until the first exploit is unleashed. By then, it'll be two seconds too late."
This apparently after he stumbled across Microsoft Knowledge Base article 306203 titled Internet Connection Firewall and Basic Firewall Do Not Block Internet Protocol Version 6 Traffic, which of course already contradicts his "Ten to one says Microsoft will never share this bit of news with the world."
This is obviously complete hogwash. The new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) (we're now using IPv4 which was originally published in 1981) is only in early development stages. According to Microsoft, the conversion from IPv4 to IPv6 will be a larger task for the industry than the preparation for Year 2000. It will affect nearly all networked applications, end-systems, infrastructure systems, and network architectures.
The problem I have with this rant is that other Web sites are copying it, and publishing it as being a discovery of a new thread, scaring users needlessly.
No consumer system currently has IPv6 installed/enabled by default. It is only available in beta (preview) form for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. People who are running the IPv6 stack today, should be knowledgeable enough not to be surprised that their firewall doesn't work with IPv6 traffic... If not, they shouldn't be messing with IPv6 in the first place!
We can be sure that when IPv6 becomes the next standard, firewall manufacturers will update their products to include support for it.
More information about IPv6 can be found on the Microsoft Web site, or on the ivp6.org Web site.
