Large ISPs doing NAT?

Wed May 1 21:17:10 UTC 2002

On Wed, 1 May 2002, Deepak Jain wrote:

> Almost? I'd say it's hands down an EXCELLENT reason. In some configs
> though, the NAT'd people can still see each other and cause problems,
> but it still cuts down the exposure.

I've received a couple off-list replies about containment within the
NAT'ed area, but I don't see this being a significant issue, as in order
to make this at all scalable, it would need to be done at a relatively
granular level, ie. directly at customer aggregation router, which would
limit scope a fair deal.

Support-staff debugging may also end up simpler, if for no other reason
that it forces them to go to the edge router to reach the customer
directly, eliminating ill-concieved 'shortcuts'. The benefits to core
engineering teams would be interesting as well, given that public space
becomes genuinely dynamic, even at the edge.

...and as has been mentioned, nothing precludes offering non-NAT as a
premium service, just as the DSL providers have done already w/ offering
/29's or static addresses.

..kg..