Keith Moore wrote:
I expressed an opinion that this group should confine itself to addressing
short-term goals rather than trying to make NATs a part of the Internet
architecture.
NATs are already part of the Internet, and gaining share.
I said this because I've looked at the problem quite extensively.
The more I have done so, the more have concluded that there's no way
to restore the valuable functionality that NATs have removed from the
Internet without providing another global address space, and that it's
much more efficient and less painful to embellish the NATs to become
IPv6 routers than it is to embellish both the NATs and applications to
support a segmented address space.
You miss at least one other possibility. If it is possible to develop
an addressing scheme that works in a heterogeneous network, then
we can have point-to-point functionality across system borders and
do not require a homogeneous address space to do so. Now, if you
look into the science of Thermodynamics (for example) you will see that
this involves a meta-problem that was already solved two centuries ago.
NATs are a consequence of a choice rather than makers of a choice.
The choice is to use heterogeneous networks. I contend that the reasons
for this choice can be found in Nature -- for example, to adapt to local needs
without imposing more expensive non-local changes. This is not an Internet
phenomenon, it is IMO the reflection of a more general principle.
BTW, I agree with Noel's solution that a NAT-haters list might be in order.
Maybe you could call it NAT-not list, to avoid the "hate". Meanwhile, the
rest of the world would continue to pursue ways to deal with the real-world
needs answered by NATs (and things to come).
Cheers,
Ed Gerck