> From: Dave Cridland <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> So currently, a NAT provides:
> - A degree of de-facto firewalling for everyone.
> - An immunity to renumbering for enterprises.
> - Fully automated network routing for ISPs.
> If technologies could be introduced to tackle especially the last two,
> I think the advantages of NATs would vanish.
Even assuming we could provide 1-3 above in some way (which I am somewhat
dubious about), I would have to say 'I don't think so' to your conclusion -
because I think your list is incomplete. The Internet as actually deployed
depends crucially on having a number of disjoint low-level naming realms -
which necessitate NAT boxes between them.
For one, my understanding of the current plan for interoperability between
IPv6 devices with an IPv6-only address, and 'the' IPv4 Internet, is the
'IPv4/IPv6 Translation' work from BEHAVE, and that's basically NAT. (There
was, a long time ago, some proposal for having such IPv6 devices with an
IPv6-only address 'share' an IPv4 address, to enable access to 'the' IPv4
Internet, but I guess it never came through.) On that alone, NATs will be
with us for decades to come.
For another, there are lots of people who have networks behind NAT boxes, for
a variety of reasons (maybe they couldn't get the address space, maybe - like
all those home wireless networks - it was just easier to do it that way). And
there is, for most of them, no economic incentive to change that, to give up
their private naming realm. (Sure, there will be a few exceptions, for whome
it does make economic sense to get rid of NAT - e.g. large ISPs for whom NAT
hacks make life too complex - but there will still be a lot left after that.
So unless you have a viable scenario in which disjoint naming realms go away,
then you do not have a viable scenario in which NATs go away.
Noel
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