using "reserved" IPv6 space

Tue Jul 17 13:06:15 UTC 2012

With all due respect to Owen, I don't share the view that everyone
should be jumping into BGP or getting an allocation from ARIN, but
that's been a long-standing debate between us.

NPT allows you to get prefixes from multiple ISPs without having to
get an allocation to coordinate routing; or in the other example,
without having to have host systems maintain multiple global prefixes
(which quickly becomes a security nightmare for auditing; a
troubleshooting nightmare for support, etc).

As far as it being costly, I think too much of the mindset on list is
the large network or ISP perspective; for the small network that NPT
is targeting, all this would happen in some "Dual WAN" multi-function
firewall appliance.  Modern hardware is often powerful enough to
vastly exceed transport capacity for these networks, so the
performance "cost" is a non-issue.

All these other methods place far too much control on the host system
(and its implementation) to be ready for prime time yet; the reality
is that without NPT being widely available, we won't see 99% of small
businesses using IPv6 for a long time, so if our goal is IPv6 adoption
maybe it's time we stop the holy war on anything "NAT".

Hammer has echoed legitimate concerns and confusion that represents a
very large portion of the user base out there.  Maybe we should be
asking why that is instead of telling him he doesn't understand
anything and that NAT is "evil".

-- 
Ray Soucy

Epic Communications Specialist

Phone: +1 (207) 561-3526

Networkmaine, a Unit of the University of Maine System
http://www.networkmaine.net/