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

[Matthew Kaufman]

On 9/2/11 8:53 AM, Paul Vixie wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Sep 2011 08:18:33 +0100
> Matthew Kaufman<matthew at matthew.at>  wrote:
>
>> ...
>> The fact is that almost everyone with an Internet connection at
>> their home or business would be perfectly happy with ports 80 and 443
>> working well and nothing else. Perhaps the occasional random UDP for
>> VoIP (to a hosted VoIP service that relays all traffic anyway) but
>> even that isn't strictly necessary if your TCP 80 and 443 are working
>> well. Even the POP/IMAP and SMTP ports aren't needed any more, as
>> web-based mail clients are all the rage.
>>
>> Would this be true if there hadn't ever been NAT? We'll never know...
>> but it the architecture in use today, and NAT and strict firewalls
>> don't break it at all.
>> ...
> can you clarify your position a little bit further, as follows?  i'd
> like to be sure i understand your vision.  are you suggesting that in
> the future we can all just use tcp/80 and tcp/443, all new users and
> all new applications, henceforth, unto perpetuity?

Do I think that's a good way for the network to go? No.

Do I think it would limit the kinds of applications that might be 
developed in the future? Absolutely yes.

Do I think that the current situation with regard to NAT and TCP 80 and 
443 is a "corner case" as Owen calls it? No.

Owen responded to Chris Engel with the claim that having a large body of 
users accessing web sites and using web services over 80 and 443 was a 
"corner case". I'm arguing that it absolutely is not, at the present 
time, any such thing.

>
> because if not, i don't see your observations as relevant to the ipv6
> transition,

It is relevant insomuch as claims that NAT will force everyone to 
abandon IPv4 and switch immediately to IPv6 are specious.

There's probably ways to get people to switch, but FUD about how 
"everything will break" isn't one of them.

> wherein we need to preserve an end to end packet transport
> as the basis of "the essence of the internet".

We should.

> which way we as a
> community decide to move on this, which vision we treat as consensus,
> will inform "the market" as well as make "history".
Well, there's lots of good reasons to adopt IPv6 instead of layering 
more NAT, but claiming that web sites and web services are rare and thus 
most existing things will break if you can only reach web servers isn't 
one of them.

Matthew Kaufman