Brian K. White wrote:
Per, I'm replying to your post but this isn't meant to sound directed at you personally. Every instance of "you" below is figurative.
Hi Brian, kind of makes it difficult to respond then. Please assume a "Personally speaking" prefix on every response below:
If you don't believe your smb needs anything nat breaks, it just means you don't understand what you're talking about.
I do I know what I'm talking about. I've been using NAT in my business since 2004, and sofar NAT hasn't broken anything for me nor my business. (that I know of, but I'm prepared to listen to suggestions).
Luckily, other people in key postions do and have seen to it that ipv6 got invented and then implemented in all the major hardware and software by now. You think they did all that for the fun of it? You think it maybe makes anyone a bunch of money? It costs everyone. MS didn't sell more copies of Windows because they added ipv6. Cisco didn't sell more routers because they added ipv6. They all knew there was simply no choice. But somehow, for you, miraculously, it's not necessary?
I've never said that. (I don't think I've heard anyone say it either). IPv6 is certainly the way to go, but it doesn't always justify the effort in and by itself.
What else that breaks things for everyone else but works for you don't you care about? Does your car suck down gas at 6 miles per gallon? Are your refrigerator and air conditioners and heaters all nice sturdy reliable indestructible 1950's models that work great for you, while burning enough power/fuel to run 3x as many modern units? How many houses go cold to support yours because "it works for you"? Do you smoke and talk on cell phones in restaurants? Do you park diagonally across two parking spaces just so no one can park close enough to risk scratching your car? Did you print a fake handicap tag so you can always park right in front of every door? So convenient! I'm guessing no to all of the above. No one here seems to be anything like that sort of jerk at least about things they understand. Try to understand that this is somewhat like that.
Okay, I can sort of see what you're aiming at, but I think you're pointing your finger at the wrong culprit - NAT is omnipresent because IPv6 didn't make it out there fast enough. Blame the hardware manufacturers and the providers for that. NAT isn't going away anytime soon, despite being broken, and again you can blame the manufacturers and the providers. NAT solve[d|s] a real problem, and mass-culling it is not possible. The problem is that there is no hardcore business case for swapping out the end users modem/router nor for deploying new IPv6-capable boxes at an extra cost. If somebody called up my neighbours and said "Guys, I've got a new router for you, can I come round and swap it for your old one? At no cost for you, of course", they'd have no problem with it.
By insisting on using NAT in situations where it's not actually required you shoot yourself in the foot, because developers can not then develop the cool new things that NAT makes impossible. Whole classes of things are just impossible if it's known that lots of nat is going on in general between any two machines. Sure there are places where nat might still be useful, but THOSE situations are the exotic contrived ones, not the other way around.
I can think of at least a million xDSL customers in Switzerland who are most likely using NAT. It's very useful to them, hardly exotic nor contrived. However, it is true that there are few, if any, places where NAT is actually _required_. However, until consumer-level IPv6 hardware becomes affordable, we're stuck with NAT, and to millions of people it works really well - despite being broken. Now, to play along with your analogy from above, how about we take a look at how difficult it is and has been to sell the idea of energy conservation to people around the world and compare that to how difficult it would be to sell them a new router at CHF500 because it does IPv6 and that eliminates the need for NAT (which is really broken). -- Per Jessen, Zürich (19.9°C) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org