> >By all means, let's deal with NAT. Let's find better solutions to the
> >problems that NAT purports to solve - solutions that don't create the
> >plethora of additional problems that inherently come with NATs.
>
> The only true solution is to not use NAT. Yet it is still being heavily
> deployed.
Understood. But we in IETF can't do anything about what people are
deploying now. We can however start trying to work on things
that can get deployed two years from now.
And while it should be clear that the future of IPv4 is irrevocably
tied to NAT, the future of the Internet is not limited to IPv4.
> >NAT is an architecturally bankrupt strategy - the more you try to fix
> >it, the more complex the architecture becomes, the harder it becomes to
> >write and configure applications, and the the more brittle the network
> >becomes. There is no way to fix the problems created by NAT without
> >a global name space for points in the network topology, and this is
> >the thing that NAT fundamentally destroys.
>
> I agree with that, but see no other alternative (other than waiting for
> IPv6) than improving communication through NAT piece by piece.
The best way to improve communication through NAT is for the NAT
boxes to support IPv6 routing and 6to4.
> > > Work in this area is starting in the new MIDCOM working group. But some
> > > people are still worried about being politically correct with respect to
> > > denying the perceived legitimacy of NAT.
> >
> >That's not political correctness, it's sound engineering.
>
> Academia and closed groups have the luxury of sticking to sound
> engineering. The rest of the world is much more complex and we have to deal
> with the ugliness of a varied topology Internet.
I agree that the market will demand more short-term fixes. But I don't
think we in the IETF have the luxury of abandoning sound engineering -
at least, not if we want the Internet to continue to support diverse
applications. Indeed, the vendors can come up with short-term fixes
by themselves, but it takes discussion between many different kinds
of parties, and a balance of short-term and long-term goals,
(and hence a forum like IETF) to move things in a sane direction.
This is why I think that IETF should concentrate its energies toward
developing a viable path out of the NAT-hole rather than trying to
dig that hole even deeper.
Keith
