It would be interesting to see how much of the IETF's resources are
used up by NAT issues.
Probably not as much as needed, actually.
Be that as it may, let's do some arithmetic: I would guess
that the really huge equipment vendors probably have about
50 FTEs each working on NAT workarounds (not NAT
implementation per se - just NAT workarounds). Caveat: I
don't have any real numbers, this is just an estimate based
on what I've encountered in talking to people/companies
about NAT. These workarounds include things like stateful
inspection/rewrite, relaying and encapsulation protocols,
etc., plus the associated coding, QA, standardization work,
and documentation, and includes everything from workarounds
for voice to workarounds for IPSec. If you average about
$200,000 per employee per year (including salary, benefits,
office space, parking, telecom costs, etc.) that comes to
$10,000,000/year per really big company. That sounds like a
lot of money to me.
Melinda