Large ISPs doing NAT?

Thu May 2 18:34:23 UTC 2002

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 02:22:40AM -0700, pmb+nanog at sfgoth.com said:
[snip]
> >> You've got to be kidding. Do you think it's clear to the average consumer
> >> buying a GPRS phone what NAT is, and why they might or might not want it?
> >
> >The average customer buying a "web-enabled" phone doesn't need a
> >publicly-routeable IP. I challenge anybody to demonstrate why a cell phone
> >needs a public IP. It's a PHONE, not a server.
> 
> And what if I want to invent the next big thing? A game, that people play
> in real time, with their palm-sized gizmo. What if that game can't be made
> scalable unless those devices have real IPs? What if that game is the
> catalyst that causes a million more customers to go buy a gizmo from
> Cingular?

That's a lot of "if"s. As one other person wrote, IPv6 will probably be the
answer here - the only question is, how long it will be before it becomes de
facto (i.e. all standard networks support and transit it, by default), and
how much pain we will have to endure before this is the case.

> If providers assume that GPRS devices are all just "web-enabled phones",
> then that's all they will _ever_ be, and no one will care, and no one will
> buy them. If all I want is a PHONE, not a server, I can buy that today (and
> Cingular doesn't have to spend millions to deply a whole new backend.)

*nod* I'm as much a fan of new gizmos and new features as anybody (heck, my
cell phone does ssh! (it's a VisorPhone running TGssh)), but I think until we
get an infrastructure that can scale to support assigning a routeable IP to
even the _current_ number of cell phones, we need a stopgap measure in the
meantime. NAT is a good contender for that measure. IPv6 is, IMHO, the
ultimate solution, but I'm not sure we're there yet.

> IMHO, the attitude of "we already know what services you want" is at odds
> with the intent of the Internet, and exactly the BS that Telcos have been
> feeding customers for years.

I apologize if that was the attitude that I conveyed; it is most assuredly
_not_ the attitude I hold. I merely meant to convey that a workable solution
now is better than the perfect solution 5 years from now. No reason why we
can't have both, though.

> I have yet to see any good argument for why mobile-IP providers should use
> NAT instead of routable space. And no, "because they might get rooted" is
> not a good reason. That's the responsibility of the device designers, NOT
> THE NETWORK.

And I still have yet to hear a convincing argument for why _right now_, NAT
is not, at the least, a workable solution to this issue. It can surely hold
us for a year or three until IPv6 has become the standard. (that timeframe
may be a bit optimistic ...) Given current devices and technology, why is NAT
not a temporary solution?

> -pmb

-- 
Scott Francis                   darkuncle@ [home:] d a r k u n c l e . n e t
Systems/Network Manager          sfrancis@ [work:]         t o n o s . c o m
GPG public key 0xCB33CCA7              illum oportet crescere me autem minui
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