I agree that NATs are evil, and *should* not exist. But, since ISP's
currently charge tons of money for more than one IP address, they always
*will* exist.
Maybe IPv6 will fix all that . . . . we can only pray . . .
easily fixed.
get a single IPv4 address, assign it to a 6to4 router that's installed
at your border, and put up to 2**80 hosts (okay, 2**16 hosts if
you use stateless autoconfig) behind it. you can then get to any of
those hosts from any another machine that speaks IPv6. if those
machines don't speak IPv6, they can often be upgraded to do so.
if they don't have IPv6 connectity, they can get it using 6to4.
and you can use an old PC running NetBSD as a 6to4 router.
the technical solutions exist. what is needed is for more OS vendors
to support v6 (and 6to4 on the host).
Keith