----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
It's not transparent to: Application Developers Operating Systems Home Gateway Developers Consumer Electronics Developers Technical Support departments My users who are trying to talk to your users using applications that are designed to work in a NAT-free world. My technical support department that gets the "we can't reach them" calls from my users who can't reach your users.
It may not be your first trip to the rodeo, but, you do appear to have a rather limited perspective on the far reaching detriments of NAT.
This is possible. The networks I administer are, admittedly, smaller ones, and they tend to be business-aimed, and thereby have a more strictly limited set of policy-allowed uses... which I've set. Customer transit networks will necessarily expose a larger set of usage... but they also generally (Rose.net notwithstanding) don't apply NAT. I see cogent arguments on both sides of the issue. And my thanks to those on this part of this thread who've supplied actual explanations, rather than merely assertions. Cheers, -- jra