Creating demand for IPv6

Wed Oct 3 02:15:27 UTC 2007

Mark,

On Oct 2, 2007, at 3:52 PM, Mark Smith wrote:
>> As far as I can tell, IPv6 is at least theoretically capable of
>> offering exactly two things that IPv4 does not offer and can't easily
>> be made to offer:
>>
>> 1. More addresses.
>> 2. Provider independent addresses
>>
>> At the customer level, #1 has been thoroughly mitigated by NAT,
>> eliminating demand. Indeed, the lack of IPv6 NAT creates a negative
>> demand: folks used to NAT don't want to give it up.
>
> Those people don't know any better, because they probably haven't  
> used a NAT free Internet.

It isn't that simple.  The fact that NAT exists and is seen as useful  
by many people (whether or not they are even aware of it) means  
services and applications need to be aware of it.  You cannot simply  
wave a magic wand and say "there shall be no NAT".  Even if there  
weren't NAT, folks interested in security would argue and/or insist  
on stateful firewalls.

> Have you used a NAT free Internet?

Yes, actually.

> So if more addresses was "thoroughly mitigated by NAT", when were  
> these problems that NAT creates fixed?
>
> http://www.cs.utk.edu/~moore/what-nats-break.html

It would seem the market has determined that the issues Keith had  
concerns with were less important than the advantages NAT provided.   
And Beta was better than VHS, but VHS won.  I will admit that at  
times it feels a bit like we're trying to push Super Beta.

Regards,
-drc