Consumer Grade - IPV6 Enabled Router Firewalls.

Mark Newton newton at internode.com.au
Sat Dec 12 07:09:37 UTC 2009


On 12/12/2009, at 12:11 AM, Simon Perreault wrote:

> We have thus come to the conclusion that there shouldn't be a NAT-like firewall
> in IPv6 home routers.

Eh?  What does NAT have to do with anything?  We already know that IPv6
residential firewalls won't do NAT, so why bring it into this discussion
at all?

Some of us are trying to formulate and offer real-life IPv6 services
to our marketplaces before IPv4 runs out, and the vendors simply
aren't interested in being there to help us out.  Pointless distractions
about orthogonal issues that don't matter (e.g., NAT) don't help at
all.

FWIW, I asked Fred Baker about this at the IPv6 Forum meeting in 
Australia this week.  He'd just handled another question about 
the memory requirements required for burgeoning routing table growth
by saying that if routers need extra RAM then routers with extra RAM
will appear on the market, because "if you're prepared to pay money
for it, we'll try to sell it to you."  

So I asked, "I'm prepared to pay money for IPv6-capable ADSL2+ CPE.
Are you prepared to sell it to me?" and he said, "Yes, just not with
our firmware."

Which I thought was a bit of a cop-out, given that it was one of our
customers who developed the IPv6 openwrt support in the first place,
with zero support from Fred's employer, after we'd spent two years 
hassling them about their lack of action.

... and this is in the same week when, in the context of IPv6, someone
else asked me how many units of their gear we'd ship ("Zero. You don't
have a product with the features we need so we'll use one of your
competitors instead. Lets revisit this when you're prepared to have
a conversation that doesn't include `lack of market demand' as a
reason for not doing it.")

Argh.  Disillusionment, much?

  - mark

--
Mark Newton                               Email:  newton at internode.com.au (W)
Network Engineer                          Email:  newton at atdot.dotat.org  (H)
Internode Pty Ltd                         Desk:   +61-8-82282999
"Network Man" - Anagram of "Mark Newton"  Mobile: +61-416-202-223









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