On Tue, 23 Jun 2026 at 04:15, Brian Knight via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> wrote:
I'm now convinced that the proverbial ship has sailed. NAT had to be developed for IPv6. It will be used. It is here to stay. The "NAT is cancer" statement is old hat and no longer relevant.
I have never deployed IPv6 NAT for multihoming, but I have deployed IPv4 NAT/PAT for it.
If deploying IPv6 NAT is as difficult as folks say, it's time to make it simpler so SMBs can do what they already know how to do.
They have few alternatives, and NAT is going to be among the least costly options.
I think it's entirely fair to want for A but know that B must be done. Like of course I always wanted that IPv6 would bring some brave new world of end-to-end Internet. But I want a lot of good things for this world, which are naive things to want under the incentives the world has. And in this case, not budging on our principles which cannot be achieved is causing tremendous harm. IPv4 market size is about size of Portugal or New Zealand, it is not a trivial force, to understand all the complex interactions it has to technology and economy is impossible, and we'll gain more and more understanding in coming decades and centuries what it truly did, but we can fairly assume that commanding majority of those impacts will be negative for any technical or economical goal we may have. -- ++ytti