Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Yes, I've never been comfortable with the device specificity of IPv6

these days it's really not much different from IPv4: During the lifetime of a connection, the prefix stays the same, so that's equivalent to the IPv4 address before that.

The actual machine address rotates very often, so there's no real value in using this for identifying unique devices.

If you want to profile specific devices, you're much better off using the same attributes you were using with IPv4 (user agent, TTL, other protocol specific fingerprint techniques)




But isn't NAT deprecated for IPv6?


You don’t need to nat for privacy. That was my point. If your machine uses a different outgoing address for every connection, it’s as well masked as if all your machines used the same address.

The only thing that stays static across connections is the provider assigned prefix and that’s equivalent to your dynamic ipv4 address.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: