Re: NAT box spec? (RE: myth of the great transition)

On Tuesday, Jun 17, 2003, at 22:55 US/Pacific, Harald Tveit Alvestrand 
wrote:
> at the risk of feeding into a long-burning flamewar:
> when you say "a decent NAT box spec", what do you think of?
Now, you've done it.

> As far as I can tell, a NAT box contains, over and above what it does 
> because it's a router, a firewall or any other thing it might do:
> - Address translation
> - Application layer gatewaying
> - Remote control of the NAT functionality (already being worked on in 
> MIDCOM)
> So what did you want a "decent NAT box spec" to say?
>
>                Harald, genuinely curious
I maintain the NAT code (among other things) in the firmware of a 
consumer Wi-Fi/router product.  I'm not sure I can think of anything 
the IETF needs to do here beyond what it has already done-- or is in 
the process of finishing up.
I think the spec that Mr. Hallam-Baker would like to see is likely to 
emerge from outside the IETF.  In fact, I predict that several 
competing de facto standards will emerge in the market, and eventually 
one of them may win out-- but I'm pessimistic about that.
When customers of retail Internet service start demanding a NAT 
standard, then that's when the IETF might want to think about 
documenting the standard that the market seems to want.  Not before, I 
think.
I see no evidence that such demand exists now, or that it's very likely 
to exist in the foreseeable future.  Piteous whines from applications 
developers complaining about the weird menagerie of NAT implementations 
do *NOT* constitute an indication of real demand from retail Internet 
service customers.
The IETF has already decided how to proceed with addressing the 
limitations in IPv4 that make the deployment of NAT devices an optimal 
strategy in some cases.  We've seen how successful the IETF has been in 
persuading users that a new protocol is superior because it comes 
stamped with the magick 'Draft Standard' label.  I doubt that providing 
such a magick stamp for NAT devices would be worth the effort if the 
market isn't interested in products that claim to be compliant with it.

--
j h woodyatt <jhw(_at_)wetware(_dot_)com>