> From: james woodyatt <jhw(_at_)wetware(_dot_)com>
> I can assure you that the vast majority of those customers using the u
> NAT in either of these products-- and I get a lot of customer feedback
> .. -- are doing so for reasons that are far less technical than you
> suggest.
> They are *not* doing it because they "want identifiers for their
> machines that are independent of their location in the connectivity
> topology." They are doing it because they want to share their Internet
> access with multiple computers.
Your take is not matched by what other people are saying, which is what I was
going on (but see below).
E.g. one person recently replied to a private message of mine (he can speak
for himself, if he wants), but the substance of what he said was that he
think that outside the US, almost everyone uses a NAT (not just homeowners
who want to hook up N computers when their always-on-ISP only gave them one
address), and he implied that addressing was a big issue (the example he gave
was of a university that didn't want to renumber again, after switching ISP's
once).
However, as the old aphorism goes, "the plural of anecdote is not data" - and
the situation may also have the usual statistics ("lies, damn lies, <etc>)
issues.
It may well be, for example, that the majority of NAT *boxes* sold go into
house applications where the intent is to share one address, but that a
relatively few very large NAT boxes (e.g. at companies) account for a larger
number of *users*.
I'd love to hear of some real data to sort this all out.
> Have any of you looked at the actual marketing copy that sells real
> people on why they might want to pay real money for a NAT box? It might
> be instructive.
You really expect the marketing department to have clue? :-)
Noel