On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 01:32:16AM -0700, khuon@NEEBU.Net said:
### On Thu, 2 May 2002 01:20:40 -0700, Scott Francis ### <darkuncle@darkuncle.net> casually decided to expound upon Peter Bierman ### <pmb+nanog@sfgoth.com> the following thoughts about "Re: Large ISPs ### doing NAT?":
SF> The average customer buying a "web-enabled" phone doesn't need a SF> publicly-routeable IP. I challenge anybody to demonstrate why a cell phone SF> needs a public IP. It's a PHONE, not a server.
Time to start thinking a little further down the line. What if the phone actually becomes an wireless IP gateway router? It routes packets from a PAN (personal area network) riding on top of Bluetooth or 802.11{a,b} to the 3G network for transit. NAT would certainly become very messy.
*nod* NAT is a solution for current problems, in some situations. It may or may not create more problems in the future than it solves in the present (sign me up for one of those gateway router phones though - mmm...) Again, while I'm not predicting what kind of network landscape we may see in the future, NAT _does_ appear to solve problems in the present under certain situations, and IMHO should not be dismissed out of hand just because it's not "pure IP." Forward thinking is critical - but those who do it at the expense of current issues are called researchers and scientists, and generally are not running production networks. :) -- Scott Francis darkuncle@ [home:] d a r k u n c l e . n e t Systems/Network Manager sfrancis@ [work:] t o n o s . c o m GPG public key 0xCB33CCA7 illum oportet crescere me autem minui