On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:29:02 -0700 (PDT) Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com> wrote:
Owen DeLong wrote:
The hardware cost of supporting LSN is trivial. The management/maintenance costs and the customer experience -> dissatisfaction -> support calls -> employee costs will not be so trivial.
Interesting opinion but not backed up by experience.
By contrast John Levine wrote:
My small telco-owned ISP NATs all of its DSL users, but you can get your own IP on request. They have about 5000 users and I think they said I was the eighth to ask for a private IP. I have to say that it took several months to realize I was behind a NAT
I'd bet good money John's experience is a better predictor of what will begin occurring when the supply of IPv4 addresses runs low. Then as now few consumers are likely to notice or care.
Interesting how the artificial roadblocks to NAT66 are both delaying the transition to IPv6 and increasing the demand for NAT in both protocols. Nicely illustrates the risk when customer demand (for NAT) is ignored.
Customers never asked for NAT. Ask the non-geek customer if they went looking for a ISP plan or modem that supports NAT and they'll look at you funny. Ask them if they want to share their Internet access between multiple devices in their home, and they'll say yes.
That said the underlying issue is still about choice. We (i.e., the IETF) should be giving consumers the _option_ of NAT in IPv6 so they aren't required to use it in IPv4.
IMO, Roger Marquis