Subject: RE: Stupid NAT tricks and how to stop them.

From: "Michel Py" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 15:06:35 -0800

> Austin Schutz wrote
> the ipv6 vs. NAT battle is over in the marketplace.

Especially now that the size of the routing table is not a problem
anymore.

> So the real question is: Given NAT, what are the best
> solutions to the long term challenges?

A protocol that would be only v4 with more bits in the first place, with
routers / NAT boxes that would pad/unpad extra zeroes (also including
extra TBD fields). As this would be 100% compatible with v4 this could
be deployed without too many headaches.
This was called "v4 compatible" in IPv6, unfortunately the address
format was not the same as IPv6 unicast and it was never deployed.

A while ago came the analog telephone. Some said that it was
un-maintainable and would result in the world phone system collapsing.
ISDN was the solution that would have saved us from the evil analog
phone.

Later came NAT. Some said that it was un-maintainable and would result
in the Internet collapsing. IPv6 was the solution that would have saved
us from the evil NAT.

Also came memory issues with the global routing table. Some, including
me, said it was un-maintainable and would result in the Internet
collapsing. IPv6 was the solution that would have saved us from the evil
ever-growing routing table.

I was wrong.

Today, 90% of the phones in the world are still analog. Including mine,
in the capital of California and my buddies' in the heart of Silicon
Valley.

Today, 99+% of the hosts in the world still run v4, including mine and
99+% of the reader's hosts.

Michel.

_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 18:25:19 -0500

> be deployed without too many headaches.

huh?  there is no way to make a protocol that can address more hosts 
than v4, that is 100% compatible with v4.  and there's no good way to 
divide up the net into v4 enclaves and v6 enclaves because the 
applications that need v6 addressing don't fit neatly into enclaves.

> 99+% of the reader's hosts.

and at some delta-T in the future, some things will be different.  it 
might (or might not) be that lots more hosts run v6, it might (or might 
not) be that NATs are discredited, it might (or might not) be that the 
Internet mostly exists to connect walled gardens.    the fact that 
people have made incorrect predictions in the past does not mean that 
today's predictions that you want to be incorrect, are incorrect.

we can't say for certain that IPv6 will ever take off like gangbusters, 
nor that it will replace IPv4.  all that we can do is try to design 
protocols for a network that we think we'd like to have, and design 
transition paths that we hope are attractive.

personally I'm tired of the arguments about how we got to where we are. 
  I want to discuss how we get out of this mess.

Keith

---

From: "Anthony G. Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 06:16:48 +0200

Keith Moore writes:

> Internet mostly exists to connect walled gardens.

Probably the last of these, but for economic rather than technical or
political reasons.  As long as multiple IP addresses cost ten times
more than a single address, NAT will stay.  This would be true even in
a pure IPv6 world.

---

From: Artur Hecker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2006 11:26:21 +0200

>> in the capital of California and my buddies' in the heart of Silicon

the (static) statement that "90% of phones are analog" seems very  
wrong to me.

according to newest ITU-D estimates, by the end of 2004, there were  
1.2 billion land lines, with an average annual growth rate of 5.8%  
since 1999. this means 18.99 lines per 100 world inhabitants [1].

i ignore how many of these lines are analog, but what is for sure is  
that the most phones today do not have any lines at all: at the same  
time, the ITU registered 1.76 billion cellular subscribers, with an  
annual growth rate of 29% since 1999. This makes up for 27.61 phones  
per 100 world inhabitants [2].

the vast majority of cellular phones are not analog (GSM+ being the  
nr 1 technology [3]) and thus probably less than 50% of world phones  
are analog.

i don't know how this relates to the current nat/ipv6/ipv4  
discussion, but the argument above could be easily turned into a  
counter-argument: one could have said that with the original analog  
phones we were not able to solve the digital divide in the voice  
service and a new technology has become necessary :-)

regards
artur

[1] http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/main04.pdf
[2] http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/at_glance/cellular04.pdf
[3] http://www.gsmworld.com/index.shtml