Security, Safety and the Acceptance of IPv6

In order for a network protocol to gain acceptance in the broader Internet community it is necessary for that protocol to be deployed on enough systems and used by enough people to show that it is both beneficial and also not a danger to the rest of the network as a whole. Gaining acceptance for a new protocol is therefore a chicken and egg problem, and solving it requires that protocol designers and developers consider the issues of security and safety earlier in the development process. In this paper I will discuss some problems faced in deploying IPv6 that relate to the perceived safety and security of the protocol, and give a specific example from the FreeBSD project in which features of IPv6 were turned off for safety reasons.