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I think what makes NATs a bit heterodox to internet ethos is that they insert an element of hierarchy to a concept that was originally preached as egalitarian.
by squozzer 9y ago
I think what makes NATs a bit heterodox to internet ethos is that they insert an element of hierarchy to a concept that was originally preached as egalitarian.
So do routers, but the extent of their manipulation is merely to ensure a packet reaches its desired destination. NATs act more aggressively.
- rconti 9y agoBut isn't a centrally-dictated RFC on IPv6 returning us to the dare-I-say-hierarchical days of IP address allocation also a problem? As TFA points out, CIDR+NAT has decoupled true endpoints from hierarchy, and its adoption was ad-hoc and cooperative ('egalitarian') rather than dictated.
- wmf 9y agoWait, so having fewer IPs than devices is freedom and having more IPs than devices is a form of oppression? I'm so confused.
- topspin 9y agofreedom vs oppression....... That is the sort of mentality that has always toxified this whole matter. This is an engineering issue. NAT wasn't created to enslave anyone. The author isn't arguing in favor of NAT. Only that NAT is much more than an address scarcity kludge and is actually an expression of real requirements that neither IPv4 and IPv6 can address well sans NAT. The concept of a fixed, routable, global address number is possibly naive considering mobile hosts, privacy, multi-homing, security and other issues. Maximum liberty may be to decouple routing from any particular routing number scheme. It's impossible to discuss any of this rationally; the anti-NAT camp has its dogma and can't be engaged. Two decades of this myopia headed into three...