On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 17:55:28 -0500 (EST)
Dean Anderson <dean(_at_)av8(_dot_)com> wrote:
On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Keith Moore wrote:
The residential users don't need to have a globaly unique
IP address.>
That's like saying residential telephone users don't need
to have a> phone number at which they can be reached.
(after all, the purpose of> their residential phones is to
call businesses for the purpose of> obtaining services,
right?)
No, its not at all like saying that. Its like saying that
residential phone users don't need a globally unique
circuit facilities assignment(CFA) number. Indeed, most
residential telephone users aren't aware of that number,
even though they have one. The globably unique telephone
number is more comparable to the email address, or the
instant message id.
only if you want to insist that every application that
someone might want to run at home should require an expensive
external infrastructure. (there are no polite words to
describe people with that attitude)
As Kazaa, Napster, Groove, and other protocols have
demonstrated, its quite easy to create peer-to-peer
applications without either expensive external infrastructure
or fixed, unique IP addresses.
I'm afraid it isn't quite that easy. I contribute to a few
discussion / help forums where people use these types
applications, including IM with file transfer or VoIP, and the
question as to how to re-configure the NAT/Firewall box to make
the application work comes up quite often.
However, people are willing to wear the inconvenience, as the
benefits, legal or otherwise, are greater.
Everything has a cost. For these types of applications, and the
applications that Keith mentioned, IPv6 will be both cheaper
and far more flexible than the IPv4+NAT combination.
The scalability of
these protocols has threatened the Music and Movie
Industries--and thats really something. I wouldn't have
thought such a thing possible ten years ago.
This really doesn't say much about the scalability of the
solution. What it indicates is how much effort people are
willing to go to to commit what is perceived as victimless crime.
If these applications work "out of the box" it means effort has
be put into developing NAT traversal solutions. While this effort
is necessary, it is sad that effort had to be expended. The
developers could have been adding extra features, rather than
working around a common network infrastructure limitation.
Regards,
Mark.