3 ms·
> Most homes and even many businesses probably don't need a unique IP. The answer is then not IP but port scarcity. Depending on home activity, I have 100~400
by lloeki 12y ago
> Most homes and even many businesses probably don't need a unique IP.
The answer is then not IP but port scarcity. Depending on home activity, I have 100~400 sessions open on my router. This means as an ISP you can only have so much customers (10~50?) behind a single IP and assume reliable operation. With the growth in number of devices and online services, this is only bound to grow and is thus not a viable solution, even short term.
- colanderman 12y agoYes but those sessions can all share a single source port, assuming they are all to different destination IPs/ports. (TCP session identity is determined by both the source and destination ports and IPs.) IIRC most web browsers do not open more than 2-4 simultaneous connections to a given server. So an allocation of ports an order of magnitude larger than that should suffice for a typical home user. (Not that I'm advocating such crazy NATing!)