[e2e] the evolution of deployability

[Henning Schulzrinne]

I also suspect that the major vendors of NAT boxes are neither C nor M, 
but rather Linksys, DLink, Netgear and similar consumer-oriented 
vendors. The primary motivation for NATs is not selling boxes, but the 
exorbitant cost of IPv4 addresses. Even for a business DSL, last time I 
looked, a single IPv4 address costs $5/month. My suspicion is that ISPs 
use the IPv4 scarcity to reduce bandwidth usage by making deploying web 
servers, Shoutcast and P2P servers difficult. They have an active 
interest in not making IPv6 happen, much more than M or C, which would 
presumably be more than happy if customers had to upgrade operating 
systems or routers. (Conspiracy-minded folks could imagine nothing 
better for M than if the Internet were to convert to IPv6 on January 1 
and only Windows XP supported IPv6.)

J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed at reed.com>
> 
>     > NAT is a great example.
> 
> NAT is a really bad example, actually.
> 
>     > Vendors M and C ... got very aggressive in selling NAT, despite its
>     > severe design limitations and application impact. They marketed
>     > heavily to users and IETF a set of solutions that clearly broke end
>     > user applications already deployed. At the same time, these two
>     > vendors refused to consider an incremental migration path to IPv6,
>     > arguing that it "wasn't ready yet".
> 
> IPv6 and NAT is just a really bad example of what you're trying to talk
> about; and the reasons why IPv6 has done poorly, and NAT well, are much more
> complex than your simplistic and incorrect analysis would indicate.
> 
> NAT took off because it is, for the average user who wants to do fairly
> simple stuff, an easier *and* more functional (at the time *they* deploy it)
> solution. I.e. if you install IPv6 on all your computers - you still need a
> NAT-type box to talk to the rest of the existing IPv4 Internet. Most people
> skip the painful/relatively-non-productive "install IPv6" step, and just go
> straight to installing the NAT box.
> 
> C and M, I'm fairely sure, have no religion other than $$$, and would have
> sold the customers sky-blue left-handed rabbits if that's what the customers
> wanted. They sold NAT boxes because that's what customers wanted.
> 
> E.g., the people who started the "IPv6-Haters" mailing list didn't work for
> either C or M.
> 
> 	Noel