Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
Let's stamp out NAT, *now* - before it becomes too entrenched and we can
never get rid of it. We don't need that sort of "worked" again.
Ummm, it's FAR too late for that. As for numbers of users, it's my guess
a large percentage of the cable modem users and DSL users are running
NAPT boxes. Given Linksys offering such appliaces at around $100, that
competes well with software-based mechanisms, and is a lot simpler for
the end user to deal with.
At the higher end, a company is offering a NAT box which permits
multi-homing without BGP. Quite useful for many large companies. In
between, there are a great many companies using firewalls with NATs.
Asking some of the ISPs for enough addresses for a company's needs for
the next 12 months gets a response of "why don't you use NAT?".
To stamp out NAT, you need to find a way to get ARIN and the ISPs to
give out appropriate quantities of IP addresses.
A better plan for those who are developing applications is to think of
ways to minimize or eliminate the impact of NAT on those applications.
While it's certainly a nice thing to SAY we'd like to be able to live in
a world without NAT and be able to develop applications which are
unencumbered by that problem, the marketplace has rolled on by and
delivered on the customers' needs.
If IPv6 had been ready 4 years ago, we might have seen a major part of
the Internet growth spurt occur on it, and the reliance on NAT be less.
Given the policies in place, and the state of the usable technology, NAT
is quite firmly ensconced. The battle you propose ("stamp out NAT") has
already been lost. This doesn't mean I'm any happier than anyone else
about the pervasiveness of NAT, just that I've accepted we have no
choice but to deliver solutions as best we can, taking NAT into account.
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Daniel Senie dts(_at_)senie(_dot_)com
Amaranth Networks Inc. http://www.amaranth.com