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If I understand correctly, due to NAT we’re not limited by the number of computers vs available IP addresses, but rather by number of simultaneous connections v
by nlitened 5y ago
If I understand correctly, due to NAT we’re not limited by the number of computers vs available IP addresses, but rather by number of simultaneous connections vs (number of IPs) x (number of IP ports)
- est31 5y agoYou are right, NAT is why the internet still works in the first place. However, NATs have many issues, like severely harming peer to peer capabilities. There is also additional complexity. My ISP frequently has downtimes of their NAT infrastructure. Then there is the more complex routing tables. ipv4 is highly fragmented so users with many users don't have large contiguous blocks, but multiple smaller ones. This causes routing tables to bloat up, which increases routing overhead of the packets. Lastly, there is the ridiculousness of paying for ipv4 addresses in the first place. Ideally, companies could just register them, having to pay a small service fee, that's it. In ipv6 this is the case, but in ipv4 you see Amazon paying huge sums for large ipv4 blocks. More importantly though, this cost is also handed down to customers, at least for hosters like Hetzner. For small servers, this can quickly be a significant fraction of the cost.