> Why is it so hard for people here to believe that customers might > actually know what they want, even if you don't happen to think > it's a good idea?
Going back a message or two, the firewall problem is more tractible than the NAT problem but you're right, it's similar in some of its impediments. Anyway, I do think that people know what they want, but from talking with the denizens of, say, comp.security.firewalls there's a lot of confusion about the technology, what it accomplishes, and what problems it introduces. My take on it is that users and network administrators really - I mean *really* - don't want universal reachability anymore. They want to be reachable by the people they want to be reachable by and nobody else, and that's technology that we don't know how to provide. In the absence of better technology they're relying on firewalls and NATs. I think there's a gross mismatch between the economic model underlying IP and the ones underlying how networking is practiced today, and that the resulting problems are inevitable. I'm pretty sure that standing around cursing the darkness isn't a useful response. Melinda
