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Yes, I understand how NAT works. But CPU/memory is going down in cost way faster than bandwidth demand is increasing. Regardless, its way way cheaper than buy

Yes, I understand how NAT works. But CPU/memory is going down in cost way faster than bandwidth demand is increasing. Regardless, its way way cheaper than buying IPv4 blocks clearly, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it. Edit: ok, the problem isn't hardware, it's comedy license fees. https://itprice.com/juniper-price-list/cgn.html https://itprice.com/juniper-price-list/cgn.html $470k for a license to do CGNAT at 100gbit/sec. Surely these guys are opening themselves up to be replaced with some cheaper open source based software solution?

stingraycharles 4y ago
Software-defined networking is slowly becoming more popular, but it’s always going to be more resource intensive than these enterprise-grade routers that are typically implemented using FPGA / ASICs. Having said that, I’m often equally baffled at just how expensive modern networking hardware is, but as it’s pretty much all of these carrier grade networking solutions being this expensive, I’m assuming it’s somewhat justified. That doesn’t take away the fact that NAT just adds an expensive layer of complexity on top of it, and I can imagine that in the long term, IPv6 is starting to become much more attractive.
- martinald 4y ago
  Probably a bit of a cartel for "enterprise grade" networking equipment, is my guess. Was similar in the late 90s/early 00s for web/database servers.
  - noizejoy 4y ago
    My (uneducated) guess would be to look at the way patents last too long. So society ends up suffering, rather than benefiting from IP protection.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  I’m not sure the price is justified, however the ISP market is extremely difficult/impossible to break through for startups or any company capable of building their own. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, the market is hard to break into (for other reasons besides networking equipment cost) so nobody who can actually do something about it is able to get in.
- kazen44 4y ago
  > I’m assuming it’s somewhat justified. in a sense, yes. People claiming software based solutions can match performance of hardware basic ASIC's are simply not thinking about the scale and speeds of modern core routers and switches. For instance, taken from the blog of ivan pepaljnak[0] > It’s hard to imagine how fast switching ASICs have to work – a modern data center switching ASIC can forward billions of packets per second. For example, the throughput of Broadcom Tomahawk 31 is 12.8 Tbps, and it can switch 8 billion packets per second, or 8 packets every nanosecond. Another thing which makes routing at large scales with large traffic flows expensive is the separation of the control and data plane. most modern datacenter routers can continue forwarding traffic inside the ASIC while its control plane encounters a failure. (usually for a few 100ms to a second, after that the forwarding table will become stale, and this cannot be refreshed without a control plane). Having a redundant control plane isn't that expensive, but it becomes harder and harder to keep this failover fast enough if your forwarding plane is pushing more and more individual traffic flows. Then there are still other items which one can add to a modern router to make it do more but also cost more. (think about accelerated IPsec encryption, MACsec at line rate or DWDM functionality). [0]: https://blog.ipspace.net/2022/06/data-center-switching-asic-tradeoffs.html https://blog.ipspace.net/2022/06/data-center-switching-asic-...
klabb3 4y ago
> $470k for a license to do CGNAT at 100gbit/sec. Surely these guys are opening themselves up to be replaced with some cheaper open source based software solution? Good. CGNAT needs to die. Addressing is fundamental and customers deserve not just an address, but their own RANGE, especially now that it's feasible.
- znpy 4y ago
  i'd love to be able to also ask for the reverse-dns zone to be delegated... if i've got a public subnet, it would be lovely to be able to use it properly. a man can dream.
notatoad 4y ago
the cheaper solution is IPv6. if an organization is too resistant to change to implement IPv6, they're going to find themselves subject to exorbitant licencing fees in order to keep using the technology they are stuck on.
fomine3 4y ago
CGNAT also needs IP-port-user logging to support disclose request by law enforcement.

stingraycharles 4y ago

Software-defined networking is slowly becoming more popular, but it’s always going to be more resource intensive than these enterprise-grade routers that are typically implemented using FPGA / ASICs. Having said that, I’m often equally baffled at just how expensive modern networking hardware is, but as it’s pretty much all of these carrier grade networking solutions being this expensive, I’m assuming it’s somewhat justified. That doesn’t take away the fact that NAT just adds an expensive layer of complexity on top of it, and I can imagine that in the long term, IPv6 is starting to become much more attractive.

martinald 4y ago
Probably a bit of a cartel for "enterprise grade" networking equipment, is my guess. Was similar in the late 90s/early 00s for web/database servers.
- noizejoy 4y ago
  My (uneducated) guess would be to look at the way patents last too long. So society ends up suffering, rather than benefiting from IP protection.
Nextgrid 4y ago
I’m not sure the price is justified, however the ISP market is extremely difficult/impossible to break through for startups or any company capable of building their own. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, the market is hard to break into (for other reasons besides networking equipment cost) so nobody who can actually do something about it is able to get in.
kazen44 4y ago
> I’m assuming it’s somewhat justified. in a sense, yes. People claiming software based solutions can match performance of hardware basic ASIC's are simply not thinking about the scale and speeds of modern core routers and switches. For instance, taken from the blog of ivan pepaljnak[0] > It’s hard to imagine how fast switching ASICs have to work – a modern data center switching ASIC can forward billions of packets per second. For example, the throughput of Broadcom Tomahawk 31 is 12.8 Tbps, and it can switch 8 billion packets per second, or 8 packets every nanosecond. Another thing which makes routing at large scales with large traffic flows expensive is the separation of the control and data plane. most modern datacenter routers can continue forwarding traffic inside the ASIC while its control plane encounters a failure. (usually for a few 100ms to a second, after that the forwarding table will become stale, and this cannot be refreshed without a control plane). Having a redundant control plane isn't that expensive, but it becomes harder and harder to keep this failover fast enough if your forwarding plane is pushing more and more individual traffic flows. Then there are still other items which one can add to a modern router to make it do more but also cost more. (think about accelerated IPsec encryption, MACsec at line rate or DWDM functionality). [0]: https://blog.ipspace.net/2022/06/data-center-switching-asic-tradeoffs.html https://blog.ipspace.net/2022/06/data-center-switching-asic-...

klabb3 4y ago

> $470k for a license to do CGNAT at 100gbit/sec. Surely these guys are opening themselves up to be replaced with some cheaper open source based software solution? Good. CGNAT needs to die. Addressing is fundamental and customers deserve not just an address, but their own RANGE, especially now that it's feasible.

znpy 4y ago
i'd love to be able to also ask for the reverse-dns zone to be delegated... if i've got a public subnet, it would be lovely to be able to use it properly. a man can dream.

notatoad 4y ago

the cheaper solution is IPv6. if an organization is too resistant to change to implement IPv6, they're going to find themselves subject to exorbitant licencing fees in order to keep using the technology they are stuck on.

fomine3 4y ago

CGNAT also needs IP-port-user logging to support disclose request by law enforcement.