Large ISPs doing NAT?

Fri May 3 00:09:15 UTC 2002

At 11:34 AM -0700 5/2/02, Scott Francis wrote:
>> 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.

Well, I'm looking at it from Cingular's perspective. They want to roll out
a new service. They want to make more money off it than from the old
service. They're willing to invest a bunch of money in new equipment if it
means they'll get enough people to sign up to pay for it. This service is
called GPRS.

If IPv6 is the answer, and it isn't available until the _next_ itteration
of this process, then _this_ itteration isn't going to be as profitable as
it could be. Cingular isn't going to redesign their backend a year from now
just because IPv6 is suddenly usable.

Mobile-IP devices are all about bringing the Internet to your pocket. That
doesn't mean just the web! The web is UI optimized for a desktop machine.
Who knows what specific applications might be developed for a user
accessing the Internet from a device the size of a bar of soap? What if I
want to write CUSeeMe for mobile phones? Or a scavanger hunt game?
Something that takes advantage of the mobility rarely found by a desktop
user?

It is these _form factor specific_ applications that will drive the sales
of devices that utilize this new network. Surfing the web is just the tip
of the iceberg that everyone already understands. If that's the only
application enabled by GPRS, then I don't forsee GPRS phones selling in
leaps and bounds. It seems like providers would be spending a whole lot of
money to upgrade their network for just one new application that only a few
customers are asking for.

>> 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?

A temporary solution to what problem?

Assuming the network can distribute NATed addresses, why can't it
distribute real ones?

Maybe I'm missing something. John Beckmeyer didn't say why they were
looking into using NAT, he only asked if anyone else was using it on this
scale.

The presumption of the first several responders was that it was to conserve
addresses, which they pointed out is not actually necessary. I'm hoping
that was the case, and that maybe the choice of NAT can be revisited...

-pmb