[arin-announce] IPv4 Address Space (fwd)

Tue Oct 28 17:22:46 UTC 2003

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003, Matthew Kaufman wrote:

> End-to-end requires that people writing the software at the end learn about
> buffer overruns (and other data-driven access violations) or program using
> tools that prevent such things. It is otherwise an excellent idea.

A lack of end-to-end just obscures the problem, it does not remove it.
Host based firewalling or tcpwrapper style approaches address this point
just as well, if not much better. At least if systems shipped with them
defaulting to DENY.

> Unfortunately, the day that someone decided their poorly-designed machine
> and operating system would be safer sitting behind a "firewall" pretty much
> marked the end of universal end-to-end connectivity, and I don't see it
> coming back for a long long time. Probably not on this Internet. IPv6 or
> not.

Unfortunate exceptions to the correct design methodology are not an
acceptable reason to ignore the correct solution.

Most NAT workaround methods currently used by applications fail horribly
when both endpoints are behind a NAT, so we are only beginning to feel the
initial impact of our reality of slightly broken end-to-end. Imagine an
internet that never had end-to-end as a goal... where 'circuits' had to be
manually provisioned across multiple carriers networks... where address
translation happens at every intra-agency link.

Oh wait, we call that the public switched telephone network... and I'm
sure we're all already well aware of the amount of innovation that
infrastructure affords us, and it's highly economic pricing model as well!

I think it's amusing that I see the largest arguments against end-to-end
coming from people who ran the networks that the end-to-end internet made
largely obsolete.

> Combine that with ISP pricing models (helped by registry policy) that
> encourage <=1 IP address per household, and the subsequent boom in NAT
> boxes, and the fate is probably sealed.

ISPs simply respond to demand. We're all market whores on this list. Where
there is a competitive advantage to offer multiple IPs per customer the
ISPs will provide it: we already see this in highly competitive markets.
Providing many IPs per household requires no major change to
infrastructure, it's simply a policy decision.