Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Michael Davidsaver via Core-talk <core-talk at aps.anl.gov> · Tue, 16 Mar 2021 12:04:01 -0700

Personally, I see IPv6 as one of several "modernization" requirements
which seem likely drop at some point within say 5 years.

The biggest one being something along the lines of "all network services
must employ strong authentication and encryption".  I expect that the
continuing drumbeat of headlines about PLC security problems will at
some point spill over into the EPICS world in a way which makes arguing
for exemptions untenable.

Our community can either be proactive, or wait to be surprised.

On 3/16/21 11:33 AM, Johnson, Andrew N. via Core-talk wrote:
> On Mar 16, 2021, at 4:32 AM, Ben Franksen <benjamin.franksen at helmholtz-berlin.de> wrote:
>>
>> Am 16.03.21 um 09:44 schrieb Zimoch Dirk (PSI) via Core-talk:
>>> On Fri, 2021-03-12 at 03:34 +0000, Johnson, Andrew N. via Core-talk wrote:
>>>> https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/M-21-07.pdf
>>>>
>>>> - Andrew
>>>>
>>>
>>> TL;DR
>>> Do we have a problem?
>>
>> I may be wrong, but AFAIU only facilities in the US have a problem. They
>> need to convince their over-bosses that they get an exception.
> 
> Sorry, but if we don’t consider how we can add support for IPv6 soon EPICS will probably no longer be eligible for use by the kinds of large experimental facilities that have funded its development to date, and it will die. I’m not saying it’s urgent, but we should start to plan for it.
> 
> That OMB memo was signed by the previous US administration, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t developed by their political appointees, and IMHO hoping that the new administration will rescind it would be a mistake. Existing DOE facilities will almost certainly be getting exemptions of some kind, but EPICS doesn’t have a monopoly in this field and if we don’t support it many future Government-funded projects will have to find an alternative since IPv6-only networking will most likely become a non-negotiable requirement at some point. This isn’t likely to be unique to the US either.
> 
> IPv6 use has been growing and many cellphone networks now depend on it (that DJB article which Ben found has a last-modified date of August 2003). There’s a page with links to several adoption statistics websites at
>     https://www.internetsociety.org/deploy360/ipv6/statistics/
> 
> I’m hoping that we’ll be able to get some DOE funding to actually do the porting work. Given the number of DOE facilities that use EPICS it seemed reasonable to suggest that, which I have done to the team that is planning the DOE’s response to that memo.
> 
> - Andrew
> 

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System