Noel,
You are sorely under-representing the IETF's and your own efforts wrt NATs.
I think of your taxonomic study of NATs much in the same vein as Carl
Linnaeus's "Systema Naturae".
In fact, given the intellectual contributions by the think tank inside the IETF
to NATs, the working groups on NATs, and the protocol engineering for NATs
devised in the IETF, one would think that we can credit the IETF with NATs and
the emergent Internet NAT architecture, guided by the IESG and overseen by the
IAB.
One of the more interesting things we may encounter in the post-IPv4 era is a
great simplication, but not elimination of NATs. In other words: NATs become
strictly address re-writers for IPv6 addresses. And yes, some of the ongoing
research in NAT architecture will probably make it into the IPv6 world. I can
easily imagine a world where hosts use NATs and IPv6 simultaneously and I
suspect this might be a next-gen firewall technology. People seem to forget
that people buy NATs for IP address sharing and firewalling. They don't seem
to "get it" that there are very few people who would ever buy a NAT because of
IPv4 address limitations.
regards, peterf
________________________________
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org on behalf of Noel Chiappa
Sent: Sat 11/20/2004 1:06 PM
To: ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Cc: jnc(_at_)mercury(_dot_)lcs(_dot_)mit(_dot_)edu
Subject: Re: How the IPnG effort was started
> From: kaih(_at_)khms(_dot_)westfalen(_dot_)de (Kai Henningsen)
>> To put it another way (and mangle a well-known phrase in the process),
>> if life gives you lemons, you can either sit around with a sour look
>> on your face, or make lemonade. NAT's make me look sour too, but I'd
>> rather make lemonade.
> Except I cannot see a way to make lemonade from NATs.
There are all sorts of people doing so, in at least three projects I can think
of.
I'd name them, except that they probably don't need the attention - it could
well result in pressure to shut any IETF component down, because it's not the
One True Religion Which Is Going To Take Over The World.
Then again, they'd probably just happen outside the IETF purview anyway, the
way NAT did.
Noel
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