> It would be interesting to see how much of the IETF's resources are > used up by NAT issues.
Probably not as much as needed, actually. Be that as it may, let's do some arithmetic: I would guess that the really huge equipment vendors probably have about 50 FTEs each working on NAT workarounds (not NAT implementation per se - just NAT workarounds). Caveat: I don't have any real numbers, this is just an estimate based on what I've encountered in talking to people/companies about NAT. These workarounds include things like stateful inspection/rewrite, relaying and encapsulation protocols, etc., plus the associated coding, QA, standardization work, and documentation, and includes everything from workarounds for voice to workarounds for IPSec. If you average about $200,000 per employee per year (including salary, benefits, office space, parking, telecom costs, etc.) that comes to $10,000,000/year per really big company. That sounds like a lot of money to me. Melinda