> Keith - There is no denying that NAT devices break a bunch of applications
> and protocols. But, they did get us through the rough times when IP
> addresses are scarce and many people wanted to hop on the Internet. In a
> way, NATs helped people keep their trust in IP and in the engineering
> community as a whole to come up with solutions that meet the need of the
> time.
the latter statement seems a bit extreme. one could as easily make the
statement that NATs are giving the engineering community a bad reputation
in the eyes of the public, given that so many problems are now being caused
by them. (also an extreme statement, but no less so than the first one)
I'd rather just say that (a) NATs are a short-term fix with limited
applicability, (b) for the long term general solution we will need
longer addresses - as in IPv6, and (c) with careful definition of
adaptation mechanisms such as NAT-PT and 6to4, devices with NAT
and ALG functionality can be part of a transition path to IPv6.
> There are some folks who believe NATs are behind the creation of private
> addresses. The fact of the matter of the matter is the other way around.
> People have been using private addresses to build their networks; People
> change their providers, but do not want to renumber their networks each
> time they change their providers. NATs were able to provide connetivity
> to external world without requiring them to renumber their addresses in
> the private network.
absolutely true.
> If nothing else, I would say that NATs were able to bring to bear an
> awareness in the minds of protocol/application designers a need to
> seperate names and addresses.
though folks are indeed looking into the implications of such a separation,
it's far from clear that this is a 'need'. every additional layer
of indirection imposes a cost in terms of money, performance, reliability,
and flexibility - all of which need to be weighted against whatever
advantages might be obtained from such a separation.
Keith
