[...] NAT's raison d'etre is that IP is broken [...]
That's very far from truth. In this case IP's only fault is lack of
exceptional foresight. Who'd think someday every kids' toy would claim a
network address?
As for NAT, you know very well it has uses entirely unrelated to IP's
limitations.
systems, and much more importantly by being completely network
protocol agnostic, part of the beauty of importing /net is that you
I believe every application layer protocol ought to be, and most of them
are, network protocol agnostic. Nothing "miraculous" there--it's just
following the basic guidelines of layered network design. Except perhaps
9P's simplicity has allowed it to make fewer assumptions about the
underlying network, no doubt because it has never been deployed in
real-world situations (BG/L and Coraid don't count).
The IP world has been trying to move to IPv6 for almost a decade, and
it will be at least that long before the migration is done, plus it
will be a painful and cumbersome process with lots of wasted resources
along the way.
What keeps the world from migrating is first and foremost inertia: IPv4
just does the job, creating some adventures every once in while. There's
also the problem of appliances with their proprietary software.
From the mainstream-OS standpoint by the end of 2002 every major operating
system featured a IPv6 stack. The last one to catch up was Windows whose
production quality stack didn't come out until Vista (actually it was
present in WS2K3, but that's a different story).
And what is the "IP world?" Aren't you part of it? Does your network use a
different transport/network layer protocol than TCP/IP? IL is dead--just in
case you were thinking of it--because to re-invent the wheel was eventually
perceived redundant.
In the Plan 9 world, migrating to a new network protocol is pretty much a
non-issue, which as I think somebody pointed out, is not hard to
accomplish over a weekend.
I see no reason why implementing IPv6 for Plan 9 has to be easier than the
same task on *BSD. What does Plan 9's dubious claim to superior design as
an OS have to do with implementing a network layer protocol?
*BSD's case took some years and many dedicated developers to come to
fruition. Plan 9's case is still in the making. Try this:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=ipv6+site:9fans.net>
P.S.: I have zero interest in discussing NAT or IPv6, if you are
interested go watch the talks at Google's IPv6 conference, and you
will see how much misery NAT is causing.
Okay. That you have cared to write a response is kind enough. Thank you.
--On Sunday, November 16, 2008 2:25 PM +0100 Uriel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
NAT's raison d'etre is that IP is broken, NAT doesn't completely solve
this problem, and creates a whole new set of problems that will
plague the world until a new version of IP can be deployed (which
interestingly enough, is made much more complicated by the prevalence
of NAT itself).
In the meantime Plan 9 and /net make it much easier to work around
IP's limitations because network stacks can be shared easily across
systems, and much more importantly by being completely network
protocol agnostic, part of the beauty of importing /net is that you
might not even be using IP to reach your gateway, and that
applications don't care what network protocols either your local host
or the gateway speak.
The IP world has been trying to move to IPv6 for almost a decade, and
it will be at least that long before the migration is done, plus it
will be a painful and cumbersome process with lots of wasted resources
along the way. In the Plan 9 world, migrating to a new network
protocol is pretty much a non-issue, which as I think somebody pointed
out, is not hard to accomplish over a weekend.
Peace
uriel
P.S.: I have zero interest in discussing NAT or IPv6, if you are
interested go watch the talks at Google's IPv6 conference, and you
will see how much misery NAT is causing.
On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 12:45 PM, Eris Discordia
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If there were no real routers and the world still used bang paths you
wouldn't be thinking about overlay networks the way you do. Does your
thinking fall under the same category of fallacy?
By the way, I think you have missed the meaning of raison d'etre. There
is a necessity, a problem, somebody responds, solves the problem. NAT
(or TCP/IP, or Plan 9) emerges.
--On Saturday, November 15, 2008 11:57 PM -0700 andrey mirtchovski
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
5. If you need NAT weigh the options of doing it. It may turn out that
importing /net is the best choice for your application. Or it may turn
out otherwise. /net has a raison d'etre--regular NAT, too.
If regular NAT hadn't been invented you wouldn't be thinking in terms
of regular NAT, therefore you wouldn't be "needing NAT".
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. (you'll find it under "logical fallacy" on
wikipedia)
