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Re: draft-ietf-nat-protocol-complications-02.txt

2000-07-12 15:50:02
Aboba;

I don't see any problems people making money 
on weird NAT-munging-weirdo-webonly-wap things 
which they sell to customers

"Making money" implies that for every seller
there is a willing buyer. For NAT to have
progressed from a twinkle-in-the-eye to the
near ubiquity that it will have in a few
years, there need to be a *lot* of willing
buyers. The marketplace rewards those who
satisfy a perceived need. 

If we would prefer that those customers
choose another solution (IPv6), then we
will need to make it every bit as easy 
to install and use as the alternative. 

See draft-ohta-address-allocation-00.txt on how to commercially motivate
ISPs (and private IP network providers with NAT, too) deploy IPv6 service.

It also makes NAT unnecessary.

I'm not sure that in practice this is a
distinction that will ever be universally
understood in the marketplace. AOL isn't
Internet access either, but it serves
more than 25 million users. As with
NAT, AOL thrives because it fills a
perceived need better than the alternative.

If IETF makes it clear that AOL is not an ISP, it will commercially
motivate AOL to be an ISP.

                                                Masataka Ohta