[e2e] using p2p overlays to overcome recursive NATs/realms

[David P. Reed]

Oh, I do indeed understand.  However, I think it is pretty clear that ISPs 
have no interest in deploying v6.  A fair number of them would love to stay 
in v4 because the lack of addresses creates a steep entry barrier for 
competitors.  Others like the idea that they can differentiate service for 
business users by charging an arm and a leg per IP address, even when they 
aren't scarce.  And the original argument for NAT (address reduction) has 
been colonized by "firewall" features that users think they need, not 
realizing that the problem is with their OS vendors.

Sadly, I believe that V6 will be deployed for some time with the same 
architecture as v4, and NAT boxes will, if anything, further restrict 
protocol innovation that provides new edge-based applications.  After all, 
if you require servers, you can insert a billing point at the server.

Having had more than a little to do with the creation of UDP, which was a 
placeholder for true group-coordination protocols rather than virtual 
circuits, I daily mourn the barriers to innovation that have been created 
by expediency that has been captured by cynical building of (garden) walls.

No flame here, just an observation that NATs are bad architecture, creating 
unnecessary scarcity, unnecessary barriers to innovation, etc.

They are popular precisely because they create what should have been there 
from the start - the ability to add new networks at the edges - it's just 
that those networks are profoundly second-class under NATs.  That's what 
internetworking was supposed to be about.  But if the technical community 
had cared enough to understand their responsibility to keep up with this 
need, we would have had V6 in 1995, and NATs would not be necessary.

- David

At 02:54 PM 2/8/2002 -0500, Hans Kruse wrote:
>OK, lets not reopen the NAT flame wars....   In your app, however, you are 
>running into the original and most prolific NAT customer -- high-end 
>home/SOHO users who are stuck with ISPs that provide exactly one IP4 
>address.  To my knowledge we do not have a non-NAT solution for these 
>folks wanting to use more than one machine behind that ISP.  That is what 
>midcom is trying to deal with until we can get enough systems IPv6 
>reachable to have this problem fade into the background.
>
>--On Friday, February 08, 2002 10:38 -0500 "David P. Reed" 
><dpreed at reed.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Any solution to the NAT problem is good.  Applying a clue-by-4 to the
>>boxes themselves, and their vendors, would be the best solution.  That
>>ain't gonna happen.
>
>Hans Kruse, Associate Professor
>J. Warren McClure School of Communication Systems Management
>Ohio University, Athens, OH, 45701
>740-593-4891 voice, 740-593-4889 fax