> From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)network-heretics(_dot_)com>
Love the email address...
> IPv4 NATs cause problems .. because they rob applications developers of
> functionality, make the net less reliable and less flexible, increase
> the cost of running applications and raise the barrier for new
> applications, and increase the effort and expense required to
> troubleshoot problems.
These things may or may not have been perfectly understood a priori by those
who deployed NATs, but my sense is that even if the world had to do it all
over again, they'd do it all again, for a simple reason: these costs of NAT
were outweighed by the benefits of NAT (allowing network expansion with
little additional coding/engineering/deployment investment; also, it allowing
other higher bang/buck things, such as advanced Web stuff, to be done, by
allocating that effort elsewhere).
> NATs don't cause us problems because they violate principles, they
> cause us problems because they break things. But the fact that the
> principles were being violated by NATs, was a clue that significant
> problems might result from their use. Sadly, many people ignored those
> clues because they didn't trust arguments that appealed primarily to
> principle... and by the time the actual problems were well-understood,
> it was too late.
The first part of this I concur with, but not your conclusion; see the
previous comment.
Noel
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