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> NAT is mainly privacy/obfuscation. That is not the original purpose of NAT. What about IPv6 privacy extensions? > Another use case is connectivity: Ok, the
by spacechild1 6y ago
> NAT is mainly privacy/obfuscation.
That is not the original purpose of NAT. What about IPv6 privacy extensions?
> Another use case is connectivity:
Ok, there might be valid use cases for NATv6 (I am not an expert), but it shouldn't be necessary for typical consumer home networks.
I have no problems with NAT as long as it a) doesn't block incoming traffic (that is the job of a firewall) b) doesn't perform symmetric address/port translation (breaks peer-to-peer applications).
- adriancr 6y agoNot the original purpose of NAT, sure, but it achieves that goal much better then IPv6 Privacy extensions are a hack and still uniquely identify someone even if it changes once a day. NAT hides them all the time. If I have 100 nodes, good luck identifying them over PNAT as an ISP, without PNAT you have nice tags per each node... they change once a day but you match to last days traffic. Onto connectivity: a) block incoming traffic - sure - blocking with firewall, NAT is redundant, its a poor mans firewall BUT if you misconfigure the firewall or is disabled, you are screwed, whereas NAT just works. b) break peer-to-peer applications. Port NAT is needed for privacy, so this is a given. I also like it breaking peer-to-peer apps I only want specific nodes to be able to host stuff if ever. For home networks STUN/TURN works just fine without having external parties know who is placing the call.
- spacechild1 6y agoSTUN doesn't work for symmetric NATs and TURN is not a solution (the traffic gets relayed over the server, which defeats the purpose of a peer-to-peer system). Port restricted NAT is sufficient: it serves the actual purpose without breaking peer-to-peer systems. Note: I'm currently developing a peer-to-peer app.