"John Loughney" <john(_dot_)loughney(_at_)kolumbus(_dot_)fi> writes:
With due respects, there is a flaw in your thinking. Many ISPs give
users NATed adresses, without users really knowing or understanding
what they are. When the users try applications or serves which fail
because of the non-transparency, the users may not know the cause of
the failures.
I had some VPN software that fails due to NATs in hotels, for
example. Support people told me that the hotel used NATs for
security - I sent a log showing all of the probes my macine had from
inside the network.
My main point is that users & providers are often confused about NATs.
Yes, I hear this a lot, but I don't buy it--or, rather, I don't
think it's relevant.
I'm absolutely sure that users don't understand about NATs, however,
they don't need to. All they need to understand is that things
ought to work and that they don't. If there is really a substantial
class of applications that users want to run that NATs disable,
I would expect someone to start advertising Internet service without
NAT as "now you can use application X".
Look, consumers don't understand how Viagra works, but it didn't
take them long to figure out that it solved a problem they wanted
solved.
-Ekr
--
[Eric Rescorla ekr(_at_)rtfm(_dot_)com]
http://www.rtfm.com/