I wonder what the ratio of NAT sales volume is to IPv6, and how
much profit people have made off the former, as opposed to the latter.
let's see. everyone acknowledges that NATs are easier to deploy than IPv6,
so comparing sales volume at this point (when NATs have been available
for several years but IPv6 is only now shipping) is fairly meaningless,
unless the very point you're trying to make is that IPv6 has taken longer
to begin deployment.
also, it seems like IPv6 deployment is more likely to take the form of
software upgrades than hardware purchases. and since software and hardware
production have very different cost models, dollars spent on a technology
aren't a very useful metric. once deployed, IPv6 gives more bang per buck
than NAT.
finally if you want to compare sales between the two cases you need to
factor in the harm done to sales of applications that are made undeployable
by NATs - which is real but difficult to measure with any confidence.
I don't think any producer of Internet hardware or software benefits in
the long term by making the net less able to support new applications.
Keith