Peter Ford <peterf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>: > I do vehemently agree with your last paragraph. In some sense, you are > saying that NAT is an intrinsic part of the nominal "residential > gateway" (could be expanded for soho and small/medium business). Indeed. I think this is true. Several people on this list have tried to tell me that I don't really want the IP address space on my local net to be decoupled from the server address. They are wrong. I want to be able to change ISPs by fixing *one* IP address in *one* place, and I want to control the mapping from global IP addresses to local ones. This desire has nothing to do with IPv4 vs. IPv6 and everything to do with wanting to be able to make only small, conservative changes in my network configuration rather than having to completely disrupt it. Once again, I don't think my situation is unique. I only have five machines on my net -- my desktop box, my wife's desktop box, my laptop by WiFi, an Apple PowerMac we watch streaming video on, and the mail/web server downstairs. For somebody administering a network of 100 machines, the hassle cost of IP renumbering would be twenty times larger. Given this, how could anyone wonder why NAT is popular? -- <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a> _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf