4 ms·

As for uses, how about: I live in a crappy country with a crappy monopolistic ISP that provides a crappy /128. No amount of purist theoretical pontification can

As for uses, how about: I live in a crappy country with a crappy monopolistic ISP that provides a crappy /128. No amount of purist theoretical pontification can fix this reality, which is guaranteed to happen for someone, regardless of the size of address space (say, because a business guy at $ISP thinks that will somehow force users to pay for extra subscriptions for their devices). I for one am glad to see that if the time should arrive for me, Linux will support this out of the box, and that the greater madness by far, is to ignore a problem simply because you'd prefer that it not exist. Besides all that, there is simple hacker value in having this kind of translation available. Great ideas are often borne of insanity.

wmf 15y ago
And now every protocol needs to add NAT66 traversal to work around you. The lack of NAT66 is not ignoring a problem, it's trying to prevent a massive externality.
- forgotusername 15y ago
  Omitting support for something that's technically possible is a dumb approach to fighting this (actually it's exactly equivalent to ignoring the problem). Instead the focus should be on making it less economical for protocol developers to violate layering and embed layer 3 addresses at layer 5, which is the reason "every protocol" needs special casing in the first place. Accomplishing that could happen in various ways, e.g. promoting SCTP (which allows establishing new channels over the same initial connection), or introduction of an abstract naming service that would preserve layering (I'd be very surprised if something like this didn't already exist).
count 15y ago
If your ISP gives you a single address and requires you to pay for more equipment, and you 'hide' with NAT, you're violating your terms of service and contract with that ISP. Are you really suggesting that NAT66 be developed and deployed in order to help you violate your contract? Should the IETF find some way to help you get out of paying your bill too, or maybe stealing somebodies WiFi?
- mindslight 15y ago
  Can unthinking contract fundamentalism please die out already? Sorry, contracts that ignore Schelling points are invalid. Concretely, it's called a demarcation point and everything past it is none of your business.
  - count 15y ago
    It's not unthinking fundamentalism, it's an understanding of the reality of the consumer internet market. What does a focal point have to do with this? There's no absence of information on either side, unless you just chose to ignore what you signed. The ISP is providing you connectivity to their network, generally through a heavily subsidized connection, for you to get 'Internet' access. Discriminating between business customers and home users is something that occurs in many industries (see wholesale/retail). You get a significantly reduced price as a home user for reduced connectivity options/flexibility. If you want or need the flexibility, you pay more and get a neutral connection, where they will (generally) happily route you whatever you need and can justify. It's not an invalid contract, and what was suggested is fraud at it's most basic level. I don't see how it's different from using a vehicle as a business vehicle, but claiming it's a personal use vehicle to your insurance company to get a cheaper rate.
    - mindslight 15y ago
      The concept of a demarcation point is a focal point across all telcom contracts, akin to the concept of a property lines. Unless MA Bell is going to own all the equipment in your house, their responsibilities need to end at a clear point. To see the physical manifestation, open up the first layer (yours) of the phone box on the outside of a residence (and note that the second layer requires a different kind of screwdriver!) Wholesale is cheaper because the overhead per unit is reduced. Business class connections give you a static IP and hopefully service commitments. These things have differences in what is actually being provided, not just a contract which says 'for business'. People work from home on consumer connections all the time, and there's probably a vestigal clause in those service contracts about 'not for business use'. And people declare business vehicles because they're cheaper as tax writeoffs (and then do use them personally as a perk of the business). Telling the providers that I have one device hooked to their network (even though I have more devices hooked to that one) is separation of concerns, not fraud. Should they be able to bill me more based on my yearly income? That surely is every businesses dream - the ultimate in price descrimination. The only thing the carrier should be concerned about is the quantity and size of packets I send through them. If anything is fraud, it's the carriers advertising 'unlimited internet', then hassling you for using it too much, and mangling your packets in direct contradiction of the seminal End-to-End paper.

wmf 15y ago

And now every protocol needs to add NAT66 traversal to work around you. The lack of NAT66 is not ignoring a problem, it's trying to prevent a massive externality.

forgotusername 15y ago
Omitting support for something that's technically possible is a dumb approach to fighting this (actually it's exactly equivalent to ignoring the problem). Instead the focus should be on making it less economical for protocol developers to violate layering and embed layer 3 addresses at layer 5, which is the reason "every protocol" needs special casing in the first place. Accomplishing that could happen in various ways, e.g. promoting SCTP (which allows establishing new channels over the same initial connection), or introduction of an abstract naming service that would preserve layering (I'd be very surprised if something like this didn't already exist).

count 15y ago

If your ISP gives you a single address and requires you to pay for more equipment, and you 'hide' with NAT, you're violating your terms of service and contract with that ISP. Are you really suggesting that NAT66 be developed and deployed in order to help you violate your contract? Should the IETF find some way to help you get out of paying your bill too, or maybe stealing somebodies WiFi?

mindslight 15y ago
Can unthinking contract fundamentalism please die out already? Sorry, contracts that ignore Schelling points are invalid. Concretely, it's called a demarcation point and everything past it is none of your business.
- count 15y ago
  It's not unthinking fundamentalism, it's an understanding of the reality of the consumer internet market. What does a focal point have to do with this? There's no absence of information on either side, unless you just chose to ignore what you signed. The ISP is providing you connectivity to their network, generally through a heavily subsidized connection, for you to get 'Internet' access. Discriminating between business customers and home users is something that occurs in many industries (see wholesale/retail). You get a significantly reduced price as a home user for reduced connectivity options/flexibility. If you want or need the flexibility, you pay more and get a neutral connection, where they will (generally) happily route you whatever you need and can justify. It's not an invalid contract, and what was suggested is fraud at it's most basic level. I don't see how it's different from using a vehicle as a business vehicle, but claiming it's a personal use vehicle to your insurance company to get a cheaper rate.
  - mindslight 15y ago
    The concept of a demarcation point is a focal point across all telcom contracts, akin to the concept of a property lines. Unless MA Bell is going to own all the equipment in your house, their responsibilities need to end at a clear point. To see the physical manifestation, open up the first layer (yours) of the phone box on the outside of a residence (and note that the second layer requires a different kind of screwdriver!) Wholesale is cheaper because the overhead per unit is reduced. Business class connections give you a static IP and hopefully service commitments. These things have differences in what is actually being provided, not just a contract which says 'for business'. People work from home on consumer connections all the time, and there's probably a vestigal clause in those service contracts about 'not for business use'. And people declare business vehicles because they're cheaper as tax writeoffs (and then do use them personally as a perk of the business). Telling the providers that I have one device hooked to their network (even though I have more devices hooked to that one) is separation of concerns, not fraud. Should they be able to bill me more based on my yearly income? That surely is every businesses dream - the ultimate in price descrimination. The only thing the carrier should be concerned about is the quantity and size of packets I send through them. If anything is fraud, it's the carriers advertising 'unlimited internet', then hassling you for using it too much, and mangling your packets in direct contradiction of the seminal End-to-End paper.