> > No real disagreement here but I do see a way forward. > First, clarify the > > terminology. Second publish a pair of RFCs rather like 1009 entitled > > "Requirements for Consumer Internet Gateways" and "Requirements for > > Enterprise Internet Gateways". > > Are you aware of RFC 4084 "Terminology for Describing > Internet Connectivity"? I was not aware of it until now but I think that it targets a different audience, namely ISPs who offer services and people who discuss ISP services. I wonder how many ISPs are even aware of this RFC. In any case, RFC 1009 is targetted at vendors and implementors of gateways. I believe that we not only need to sort out the tangle of terminology and concepts surrounding NAT, IPv4, firewalls, IPv6 and security, but also provide some clear guidance to developers of gateway hardware and software. The shift to IPv6 and winding down of IPv4 address allocations provides the opportunity to do this. As the news of IPv4 wind-down spreads, people will be hungry for more information and the story that IPv6 is better because it has more addresses just isn't good enough. IPv6 is also a technology refresh, i.e. it forces vendors to reimplement their boxes. It forces people to buy new systems. If the only thing that they get is a new protocol with wider addresses, then they will see this as a generally negative experience and wonder why people with more money couldn't just buy IPv4 addresses from those with less. Let them eat NAT! But, if there are clear guidelines for IPv6 gateways that focus on enabling functionality then people will see a value in upgrading. An explicit firewall service is a value. No NAT thus enabling more peer-to-peer applications is a value. There could be more to it as well. For instance, if we accept the model that the majority of Internet hosts will communicate with the core via stateful gateways, then there is the possibility of a standard way for an application to communicate with its local stateful gateway in order to change the state, rather than implementing things like STUN (Simple Traversal of UDP through NAT). That too, would be a value for the buyer of a standard Internet gateway. --Michael Dillon _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf