Looking for an IPv6 naysayer...

Thu Feb 10 05:10:52 UTC 2011

On Wed, 09 Feb 2011 18:47:34 -0500, George Bonser <gbonser at seven.com>  
wrote:
> In other words, the broadband provider provides a single global IP to
> the "always up" CPE.  That CPE does DHCP to user stations and hands out
> 1918 addresses and NATs them to the single global IP.

Correct.  The distinction you seem unware of (or unwilling to accept) is  
that the ISP did not assign you a private address.  Your CPE did.  The ISP  
gave you a single public IPv4 address.  With the notable exception of  
Uverse, you can put that address on any device you want.  But you only  
have the one public address, so you'll have to resort to NAT inside your  
network to support more than one machine. (DSL and cable modems can be set  
to pure bridged mode, thus turning off their routing/NAT engine. You  
cannot do that with Uverse due to their authentication method.)

This is *very* different from the ISP doing the NAT... one device doing  
NAT for thousands of customers, vs. a device in the customer's hands doing  
the NAT.

> I have yet to see a broadband provider that configures a network so that
> individual nodes in the home network get global IPs.

Open your eyes.  Many cable networks will sell you access to more than one  
address -- TW (RR) has done this for over a decade.  AT&T Uverse will  
provide a /29 for free.

--Ricky