IPv6 uptake

Sat Feb 17 18:50:46 UTC 2024

On 2/17/24 10:26 AM, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
>
>> On Feb 16, 2024, at 14:20, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Justin Streiner" <streinerj at gmail.com>
>>> 4. Getting people to unlearn the "NAT=Security" mindset that we were forced
>>> to accept in the v4 world.
>> NAT doesn't "equal" security.
>>
>> But it is certainly a *component* of security, placing control of what internal
>> nodes are accessible from the outside in the hands of the people inside.
> Uh, no… no it is not. Stateful inspection (which the kind of NAT (actually NAPT) you are assuming here depends on) is a component of security. You can do stateful inspection without mutilating the header and have all the same security benefits without losing or complicating the audit trail.

Exactly. As I said elsewhere, the security properties of NAT were a 
post-hoc rationalization. In the mean time, it has taken on its own life 
as if not NAT'ing (but still having stateful firewalls) would end the 
known security universe. We can seriously lose NAT for v6 and not lose 
anything of worth.

Mike