Subject: Re: myth of the great transition (was US Defense Department forma lly adopts IPv6)

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 07:27:03 -0400

> From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>

    > The reason that we are explaining (once again) why NAT sucks is that
    > some people in this community are still in denial about that

The person who's most in denial around here is you - about how definitively
the market has, for the moment, chosen IPv4+NAT as the best balance between
cost and effectiveness.

Get a grip. We all know you don't like NAT. You don't need to reply to
*every* *single* *message* *about* *NAT* explaining for the 145,378,295th
time how bad they are.

    > and those people impair our ability to do useful work. So we're trying
    > to educate them, or at least beat them senseless, so they'll get out of
    > the way.

Nicely put - your continual flaming about NAT really gets in the way.

	Noel

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 09:47:12 -0400

> the market has, for the moment, chosen IPv4+NAT as the best balance between

"for the moment".  NATs are not carved in stone.  and it's not our job in IETF
to defend or reinforce the market's bad decisions in the past, but to ensure
that the network works well in the future.

Keith

---

From: Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 19 Jun 2003 08:04:25 -0700

> *every* *single* *message* *about* *NAT* explaining for the 145,378,295th

Legend tells us Cato, a Roman senator during the Punic Wars, finished
every speech he made in the Senate with the words "Carthage Must Be
Destroyed". It didn't matter if it was a speech about defense, or
monetary policy or the Roman water works. His one-eyed devotion to this
task was, well, determined. Keith sort of puts me in mind of Cato...

			- peterd (CMBD)

PDF: I've decided that as punishment for joining in "Yet Another
Flamewar About NATs" (YAFAN), I must now append something suitable to
every message.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 01:18:48 -0400

> the market has, for the moment, chosen IPv4+NAT as the best balance between

Actually Noel, I think what he's in denial about is the fact that "the market"
may not have a *CLUE* on how to properly evaluate the balances.

The market has also "chosen" a certain specific MUA for its outstanding ability
to balance security and functionality.  Note that even upper management of
the vendor in question admits that errors were made:

"We really haven't done everything we could to protect our customers. Our
products just aren't engineered for security." -- Microsoft executive Brian
Valentine, on the painful realization that a $100 million, two-month-long
codeathon still hasn't fixed the glaring holes in its software, InfoWorld, 5
September 2002 (from http://www.ditherati.net/archive/2002/36/)

So should we conclude that "the market" doesn't care a rat's posterior about
security? Or should we conclude that it simply didn't realize the size of the
exposure and the downstream costs of lack of security?