[arin-ppml] An article of interest to the community....

[Paul Vixie]

On Tue, 30 Aug 2011 21:31:15 -0400
"Mike Burns" <mike at nationwideinc.com> wrote:

> What applications is Nat holding back?

nat makes everything just a little bit harder.  we have some cisco voip
phones that can traverse nat and others that can't and we have to use
the right one in the right place.  that's a capital cost if we run out
of the kind we need, and an operational cost of keeping track of which
kind we actually need in which location, and how they have to be
configured.

the invisible hand of the market just isn't helping us in this case, so
we directly bear our share of the economy-wide externalized cost of NAT.
that does not appear to be a case where "the market has decided in
favour of NAT", it feels more like "the market has adopted NAT as a
barely functional band-aid."  and while one could argue that we're
holding back the growth of the internet by trying to use
non-NAT-compatible devices, the counter-argument is that various folk
are holding back the growth of the internet by using non-dual-stack
devices.  so what we have here is a divergence in the vision itself.

note that the ARIN community could make policies that favour the "IPv4
for a long time to come, let's use CGN and NAT to make it last until
something better than IPv6 comes along" model that you've described
here, in which case ARIN (both the organization and its board) would
follow those policies.  if this vision of the future appeals to you then
i encourage you to pursue it by following the Policy Development
Process.
-- 
Paul Vixie