Subject: Re: IESG position on NAT traversal and IPv4/IPv6

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 10:13:33 -0500 (EST)

> From: Hadriel Kaplan <[email-masked]>

    > In one of the working group meetings this past week, when the group was
    > discussing a NAT traversal solution for their new protocol, an A-D
    > suggested they not spend much time on NAT traversal.
    > ...
    > I'd like to know if the IESG will push back on new protocols if they
    > attempt to work around NATs.

I'm somewhat surprised to hear this, because after the discussion a couple of
months back about IPv6 uptake, etc, I thought there was general agreement
(across the board, including both those pro- and anti-IPv6) that:

- For IPv6 to have any hope of broad deployment/acceptance, it _had_ to allow
interoperation between IPv6-only hosts, and the large amount of existing IPv4
Internet.

- The mechanism for doing that was, functionally, an IPv4-IPv6 NAT box (I
think the current incarnation is the Xlate stuff from BEHAVE).

At that time, in light of those observations, and the corollary observation
that no matter what the future winds up looking like (e.g. if the market
prefers to soldier on with IPv4 and NAT), there is going to be a lot of NAT in
it for a long time, I had actually suggested that we consider making 'works
across a NAT box' a _requirement_ for new protocol work.

If someone who considers that we should "not spend much time on NAT traversal"
could show me the flaw(s) in the above reasoning, I'd be most interested to
hear it(them).

	Noel

---

From: [email-masked] (Noel Chiappa)
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2010 14:45:58 -0500 (EST)

> From: "David Harrington" <[email-masked]>

    > is my understanding that IETF consensus is to have the industry
    > transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

That's certainly the formal IETF _position_ - whether it's the _consensus_ of
the IETF participants is another matter.

Ever since the original IPv6 decision, over 16 years ago (the Toronto IETF -
July, 1994), there has been a very considerable group of people who
disagreed. Whether or not it was large enough to be considered 'rough
consensus' is, I suspect, in the eye of the beholder.

And of course the position of the users of the network is yet another
question entirely.

So far, in that 16-year period (we're shortly going to have IETF participants
who _weren't even born yet_ when the IETF 'picked' IPv6), they have shown
little inclination to consume the dog-food.

Will the next couple of years see much change there? We'll see.

	Noel