[30945] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: IPv6 allocatin (was Re: ARIN Policy on IP-based Web Hosting)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Shields)
Fri Sep 1 20:49:36 2000
To: "David R. Conrad" <David.Conrad@nominum.com>
Cc: Christian Kuhtz <ck@arch.bellsouth.net>, nanog@merit.edu
From: Michael Shields <shields@msrl.com>
Date: 02 Sep 2000 00:47:52 +0000
In-Reply-To: "David R. Conrad"'s message of "Fri, 01 Sep 2000 15:56:59 -0700"
Message-ID: <87vgwfr553.fsf@challah.msrl.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
In article <39B0343B.7FECFB0E@nominum.com>,
"David R. Conrad" <David.Conrad@nominum.com> wrote:
> Christian,
>
> > The point was a NAT'ed (masqueraded) network attempting to
> > communicate with another NAT'ed (masqueraded) network. That
> > does NOT work for the vast majority of people on the Internet.
>
> Hmmm. If you never try something, can it be said to not work?
>
> Until such a scenario becomes _far_ more commonplace that it is today, I
> doubt anyone (other than end-to-end purists and the folks who have been
> bitten) will care.
It is a basic principle often used in both protocol design and ethics
that one cannot endorse a course of action that, if all were to follow
it, causes undesirable consequences.
If NAT is really the future, we must prepare for a world where NAT
is carried to its logical conclusion; all sites use NAT. If that
ultimate future is undesirable, then we should not even start down the
road; we must conclude that NAT is not the future. It can, then, be
at best an expedient hack.
If we accept that peer-to-peer communication is a design goal of the
Internet, then to make a convincing argument that NAT is the future,
you must outline how two sites behind a NAT can communicate with each
other conveniently.
Otherwise: "That does not scale."
--
Shields.
