> From: Doug Barton <dougb(_at_)dougbarton(_dot_)us>
> My comments were directed towards those who still have the mindset,
> "NAT is the enemy, and must be slain at all costs!"
In semi-defense of that attitude, NAT (architecturally) _is_ a crock - it puts
'brittle' (because it's hard to replicate, manage, etc) state in the middle of
the network. Having said that, I understand why people went down the NAT road
- when doing a real-world cost/benefit analysis, that path was, for all its
problems, the preferable one.
Part of the real problem has been that the IETF failed to carefully study, and
take to heart, the operational capabilities which NAT provided (such as
avoidance of renumbering, etc, etc), and then _failed to exert every possible
effort_ to provide those same capabilities in an equally 'easy to use' way.
Noel