[arin-ppml] Set aside round deux

[Roger Marquis]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> Owen ... Your running around preaching the evils of NAT and half of these
> SOHO's out there likely think your talking about some insect that flies up
> their nose when they ride their bicycle. And the ones that know what it is,
> they aren't aware of those NAT problems and so they are going to conclude
> that NAT works fine. I'm just saying, when preaching IPv6, you gotta flog a
> horse that the listener understands.

It's not a matter of understanding.  Many of us have been deploying NAT
for decades.  We understand that it brings both costs and benefits,
however, in our companies NAT is just one element in a matrix.

We understand NAT's role in multi-homing gateways, we understand the
security provided by NAT, and we also understand the drawbacks to the
so-called NAT alternatives.  If there is a lack of understanding it has
more to do with these and other business deliverables.  Aside from
network engineering our IT departments are also responsible for securing
IP (intellectual property), managing intrusion detection systems, meeting
budgets, and regulatory compliance.  These are all at least as important
as the perceived convenience of network engineering staff.

This should not imply that I've met a network engineer who has any
problems with NAT.  The organizations I have worked for are not ILECs or
backbone providers, so neteng job candidates expressing a problem with
NAT would not normally get past the first interview.  That said, it does
seem that the arin-ppml mailing list is backbone-centric, and if it had
more representation from administrators of other network models we would
hear less from the minority of engineers who have problems with NAT and
more from the rest who understand NAT's advantages over the proposed
alternatives.

Roger Marquis