NAT64 embedded formats used by actual phone carriers - networking

I'm refactoring some of my network code due to Apple's guidelines to support full IPv6 networks, and they state one reason for this is that carriers are starting to make the conversion.
When I test with Apple's NAT64 network, I see IPv4 addresses coming in mapped to IPv6 in the form:
64:ff9b::xxxx:yyyy
Based on the NAT64 spec, it seems there are other possibilities, but I am not sure if these are ever used.
I'm hoping that I can just assume the above format, but I would like to know what NAT64 mapping styles other phone carriers are using.
EDIT: I omitted an important detail from my original question - that I need to do some filtering based on IPv4 ranges in certain scenarios. So I need to be able to convert IPv6 to IPv4 for the addresses where that is possible.

There are many ways. Don't assume anything. Query the DNS64 and use what you get. Everything else will break.

Related

Subnet CIDR: Does the ip need be the first ip in the subnet?

When define a subnet, such as 1.2.3.0/24, it means 255 hosts in the subnet start from 1.2.3.0 to 1.2.3.255.
But what if I wrongly define the subnet with 1.2.3.64/24? Does it then mean the range is start from 1.2.3.64 to 1.2.3.255?
I could not find a formal document about this.
EDIT: in Java ipaddress lib (5.2.1), the 1.2.3.64/24 will be treated as range from 1.2.3.64 to 1.2.3.255, instead of 1.2.3.0 to 1.2.3.255!. The code is: new IPAddressString("1.2.3.64/24").getSequentialRange()
EDIT: My apology: the above description of ipaddress lib's behavior is wrong. It was other things that caused me think the the range become 1.2.3.64 to 1.2.3.255.
Indeed, the
new IPAddressString("1.2.3.64/24").getSequentialRange().getLower()
is 1.2.3.64,
and
new IPAddressString("1.2.3.64/24").getSequentialRange().getUpper()
is also 1.2.3.64,
so I think this is a reasonable implementation!. I have no problem of that.
The
new IPAddressString("1.2.3.64/24").getAddress().toPrefixBlock().getLower()`
will be the expect one: 1.2.3.0.
And the `.getUpper()` is 1.2.3.255.
so this is the perfect way to get correct ip range.
There is no formal specification indicating that setting the un-fixed bits (the host bits) to 0 is a convention. However, it is common practice when describing a subnet as opposed to a single address, that you leave the host bits as zero. It is an informal convention. If you are describing a subnet, why would you set those bits to anything other than zero if they are intended to be ignored? So that is what all network engineers and most other people do, they leave the bits as zero when they are describing the full subnet, when the host can take on any value.
The specification for something like 1.2.3.64/24 is that the network part of the address is the first 24 bits, and the host part of the address is the remaining 8 bits. So, the network is 1.2.3.0 and the host is 0.0.0.64. The specification says nothing else.
Likewise, 1.2.3.0/24 indicates the network is 1.2.3.0 and the host is 0.0.0.0. However, like I said, when the host is 0, that is commonly used to refer to the entire subnet, meaning the host can take on any value. When people write down a string for that subnet of 255 addresses, they will write 1.2.3.0/24.
In fact, it is unusual to see 1.2.3.0 used as a single address because many routers do not accept a host of 0.
How you parse those things is specific to any library. Some libraries parse 1.2.3.64/24 as the whole subnet, throwing out the 0.0.0.64. Some libraries parse 1.2.3.64/24 as 1.2.3.64. Some libraries have separate methods to do one or the other.
With the IPAddress library, the same parser parses both addresses and subnets. When it parses 1.2.3.64/24 or 1.2.3.0/24, the parser needs to decide what you mean by each. For the former, it interprets 1.2.3.64/24 as the address 1.2.3.64 with prefix length 24, because why else is the 0.0.0.64 there at all if you do not intend that 64 to mean something? Why throw it out?
For 1.2.3.0/24, it interprets that as the whole subnet, because, like I said, a host of 0 is commonly used to refer to the entire subnet, and it is rare to use 1.2.3.0 as an address.
However, if you wish to choose some other meaning when parsing those things, the library provides other options.
There is no formal specification for this. In fact, there is no formal specification for a lot of the different aspects of IP addressing, a lot of it is informal and simply evolved over the years to the common practices in use.
new IPAddressString("1.2.3.64/24").getSequentialRange() is parsed as the range "1.2.3.64 -> 1.2.3.64". Earlier versions of the library behaved differently, but that is how all the latest releases for the last few years parse it.
Disclaimer: I am the project manager of that library.
It's interesting because I too can't seem to find any formal specification on why setting the un-fixed bits to 0 is the convention. Looking at RFC 4632 says:
[Classless prefixes] make explicit which bits in a 32-bit IPv4
address are interpreted as the network number (or prefix) associated
with a site and which are the used to number individual end systems
within the site.
Even with the convention of setting the un-fixed bits to 0, you may have CIDR notation that has an IP ending in a non-zero number. For example: 192.168.1.254/31 which represents the range of IPs from 192.168.1.254 to 192.168.1.255.
CIDR notation only specifies the number of bits that are fixed, so even if you put .64 it would appear that the /24 still represents only 24 fixed bits of the IP address.
You can see that the CIDR Calculator from ARIN shows that 1.2.3.64/24 still represents all IP addresses from 1.2.3.0 to 1.2.3.255.
Screenshot here.
Now it may be that different systems are implemented to handle this situation differently, so I would personally follow the convention, but from the perspective of CIDR notation (and what I can seem to find in the RFC) it should still represent the entire range.

ASP.NET Quickest Way to Block all foreign IPs?

I am wanting to block every country EXCEPT USA,Mexico, and Canada from my ecommerce site. From the research I have done, using an HTTPModule would appear to be the best method. However, this would require me going through a list of hundreds of ip ranges and woudl require quite a bit of code
Anyone have nay ideas on a quick way to do this?
Even if you did block IP address range this would change as the get reallocated or taken up. Also its possible to use a number of services to spoof IP addresses or even to go out through routers / gateways in other countries even if you're not in the places you want.
You could try looking at the locale and / or time-zones set on the client machines. whilst this is not infallible and can be worked around (if the client knows what you're doing to block them),
They are en-us, en-ca, fr-ca, es-MX, it's the letters after the dash that you want, which are the ISO 3166 Codes for Countries. This may give you a start, it's not a infallible, but you're not going to get that anyway, but its a very light weight way of removing a fair amount of visitors.
IMHO, the best approach: application and/or network firewall (appliance) rules (having said that, if you have one, this may even negate the need to do IP address filtering entirely)
IIS

How do IP Addresses Relate to Countries?

I have a general question about IP Addresses. I am not sure if this question is better suited for another S/O Network (like Server Fault), but I thought I'd ask it here.
I want to try to hone in on the relationship between an IP Address and a Country. Is it fair or accurate to say that an IP Address like 100.*.*.* relates to ISPs in the US solely or is it possible that one of the octets with the 100.*.*.* range gets assigned to other Countries?
I am looking for a way to relate IP Address ranges, at their highest level, to Countries on a one-for-one basis.
Thanks.
I don't think there's an explicit rule for that. Check here.
Strictly-speaking, it is my understanding that location roughly correlates with location via IPv4 address blocks. There's a Wikipedia reference for these here.
However, more often than not this isn't particularly accurate - from personal experience relying on these results in more false results than positive. Part of the problem is that these addresses tend to shift with time and use.
MaxMind offer a free geoIP database called GeoLite 2 (link here) which I've used on a few occasions to detect an IP's origin country with a really high success rate, you just have to make sure that you update the database fairly regularly to keep up-to-date.

Reserved MAC-addresses (some are assigned anyway?)

I'm trying to make a list of all MAC addresses that are reserved, do not exist, should not be used, should only be used locally etc. (Just like the list of reserved IP-addresses on Wikipedia, but for MAC.) Basically I want to loop over all MAC-addresses from a switch and filter out the "real" ones.
This page suggests all addresses starting with 00-00-5E or 01-00-5E are reserved, but when I look them up it seems like 00-00-5E is also assigned to the Information Sciences Institute (part of a university in California).
So 2 questions:
1) Is there any place I can find a list of reserved MAC-adresses?
2) What's up with 00-00-5E? Is only part of that range reserved, or is there some reason they assigned it to ISI?
I was just looking into this myself recently. I believe that the IANA (which you refer to in one of your links) will give the most authoritative answer: IANA Ethernet Number Assignments
I don't think that this means that these addresses can never be used though. According to RFC5342, Section 2.1
"The 2**8 unicast identifiers from 00-00-5E-00-00-00 through 00-00-5E-00-00-FF are reserved and require IESG Ratification for allocation (see Section 5.1)."
So basically, it appears you need special permission from IESG (Internet Engineering Steering Group) to get an address in that range, which I suppose the ISI has obtained somehow.
Section 2.1 of RFC5342 deals with 48-Bit MAC Identifiers and OUIs, and it doesn't make any mention of any address ranges that are strictly forbidden or permanently reserved from what I've understood.
The following OUI are reserved as per RFC 5342:
OUI 01:00:5E:(00:00:00-7f:ff:ff) - Used for IPV4 Multicast and MLPS Multicast.
OUI 00:00:5E:(00:01:00 – 00:01:FF) - Used for Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) IPV4
OUI 00:00:5E:(00:02:00 – 00:02:FF) - Used for Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) IPV6
OUI 33:33:00 – 33:33:FF - Reserved for IPV6 Multicast
OUI CF:00:00 – CF:FF:FF - Reserved by IANA for PPP(Point to Point Protocol)
OUI 00:00:5E (00:00:00 - 00:00:FF) - Requires IESG Ratification for allocation.
Was looking into this myself.. I know it's been a while since the post was active.. but I found these to be ok to use locally:
x2-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
x6-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
xA-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
xE-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
Source: https://honeywellaidc.force.com/supportppr/s/article/Locally-Administered-MAC-addresses
The registration authority for MAC addresses is the IEEE. It hands out OUIs (Organizationally Unique Identifiers), which give you a three byte prefix, and 2^24 addresses within it, for a fee (currently 2 995USD). You also get the rights to the corresponding multicasts, which have the prefix with the lowest bit of the first byte set. For instance, 00:80:C2 is allocated to the IEEE 802.1 committee, which uses 01:08:C2:00:00:00 for Spanning tree.
So, there isn't really a list of reserved addresses. There is a list of OUIs that have been allocated, unless the buyer has paid (a lot) extra for privacy. You can use any address that has the local bit set freely. A tiny fraction of multicast addresses have a significant meaning because heavyweights like IEEE, Cisco, IANA assign meanings to them. From the IEEE registration point of view, there is no particular significance to these blocks (except possibly to those it has allocated to itself).
Now, how did the 01-00-5E range end up allocated to the Information Sciences Institute? The simple
answer is that they paid for it. So, really the question should be 'how did the Internet get to use part of the range allocated to ISI?'. The answer is that the IANA used to be run from an office in ISI: specifically IANA was the legendary Jon Postel
Bottom line: you are on a bit of a fool's errand. You can distinguish local addresses and multicast addresses, and make some attempt to tie up allocated unicast addresses to vendor blocks. And you can probably do a bit more with well-known multicast addresses but only by tracking down individudal vendor's documentation (IANA is obviously an important one but only definitive for 1 of the 2^22 available blocks). One of the best places to start is probably the Wireshark codebase.

what's the difference between point-to-point links and unicasting?

I read them from the COMPUTER NETWORKs. but i cannot tell from them.
Do they refer the same thing?
point-to-point links means source and destination module (may be through some intermediate machine)
see from the words, it means one point and another.(Just two point)
So, it seems the same meaning with Unicasting.
What's the difference?
Unicasting is a transport-layer action that happens over a link.

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