Re: Common operational misconceptions

[David Barak <thegameiam () yahoo com>]

> From: Owen DeLong owen () delong com

> Sigh... NAT is a horrible hack that served us all too well in address conservation. Beyond that, it is merely a source 
> of pain.

I understand why you say that - NAT did yeoman's work in address conservation.  However, it also enabled (yes, really) 
lots of topologies and approaches which are *not* designed upon the end-to-end model.  Some of these approaches have 
found their way into business proceses.  

An argument you and others have made many times boils down to "but if we never had NAT, think how much better it would 
be!"  

To this, the response "so what?" is not unreasonable - organizations which have built up processes and products around 
the non-end-to-end model may or may not see a benefit in changing their ways.  Asserting that there is something wrong 
with existing, succesful business practices is not, by itself, compelling.  

While you and I may find this type of packet header manipulation distasteful, there's lots of organizations for which 
it's normal operations.  The more NAT for v6 gets fought, the more folks will fight to preserve it.  Time could be 
better spent demonstrating why NAT isn't needed in X or Y use case, and providing configuration snippets / assistance 
for non-NAT-based solutions to those various groups.

David Barak
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