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> the applications that they value, appear to operate perfectly well in a NATed environment The key word here is "appear". There are two main factors which mai

> the applications that they value, appear to operate perfectly well in a NATed environment The key word here is "appear". There are two main factors which maintain this appearance: 1. Any technology which does not play well with NAT is guaranteed to be DOA with respect to the consumer market, so few resources get spent on them. This is a classic chicken and egg problem. 2. A tremendous ongoing effort by network device and application developers to implement whatever kludges are necessary to keep their products working with NAT. Both of these costs are largely hidden from consumers, so of course there is little outcry about them. That doesn't mean the world wouldn't be much better off if NAT went away.

drzaiusapelord 9y ago
Or worse, NAT unfriendly technologies end up adopted but bring in technical issues constantly. Look at how many SIP or VOIP forum questions end up with hard to diagnose issues eventually being found out to be NAT issues. Or the firewall rules to get 'simple' FTP to work in a NAT environment, even with passive mode. Or just how much time is wasted in general wrestling NAT.
- gerdesj 9y ago
  Welcome to my world mate. However, I happily have recipes that will make all of those things work - IPv4 and IPv6. However, as you say - a lot of time was lost making things work that should not be too tricky.
starsinspace 9y ago
The advent of NAT in home routers killed so many useful applications. Things like sending a file to someone in a peer-to-peer fashion, without middlemen, used to just work in the 90s. Then came NAT, and everything broke. I wonder if the centralized internet we have today - where information sharing between people usually involves large server farms run by big corporations - would have happened without NAT. Maybe, without NAT, people would have just stuck with the old way of doing things. Why involve a third party when you can just connect directly? NAT made it easy for the centralized services to take over. When NAT came, all the good p2p apps of the 90s and early 00s either ceased working completely, or at least became unreliable (applications were then trying all kinds of tricks for NAT traversal, but it was often slow or failed). The generally overly complex configuration for port-forwarding on routers didn't help either - if you ever tried to walk someone through setting it up back then via chat or telephone, you'll know what I mean... With a clean slate like that, with the vacuum that was created, the centralized services could just walk in. Simply because they worked. Together with all the user tracking and surveillance that came with it.

drzaiusapelord 9y ago

Or worse, NAT unfriendly technologies end up adopted but bring in technical issues constantly. Look at how many SIP or VOIP forum questions end up with hard to diagnose issues eventually being found out to be NAT issues. Or the firewall rules to get 'simple' FTP to work in a NAT environment, even with passive mode. Or just how much time is wasted in general wrestling NAT.

gerdesj 9y ago
Welcome to my world mate. However, I happily have recipes that will make all of those things work - IPv4 and IPv6. However, as you say - a lot of time was lost making things work that should not be too tricky.

starsinspace 9y ago

The advent of NAT in home routers killed so many useful applications. Things like sending a file to someone in a peer-to-peer fashion, without middlemen, used to just work in the 90s. Then came NAT, and everything broke. I wonder if the centralized internet we have today - where information sharing between people usually involves large server farms run by big corporations - would have happened without NAT. Maybe, without NAT, people would have just stuck with the old way of doing things. Why involve a third party when you can just connect directly? NAT made it easy for the centralized services to take over. When NAT came, all the good p2p apps of the 90s and early 00s either ceased working completely, or at least became unreliable (applications were then trying all kinds of tricks for NAT traversal, but it was often slow or failed). The generally overly complex configuration for port-forwarding on routers didn't help either - if you ever tried to walk someone through setting it up back then via chat or telephone, you'll know what I mean... With a clean slate like that, with the vacuum that was created, the centralized services could just walk in. Simply because they worked. Together with all the user tracking and surveillance that came with it.