Operational challenges of no NAT

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 10/28/2010 3:06 AM, Mark Blackman wrote:
>
> Is there some documented list of the usual requirements that NAT is used
> to satisfy and the corresponding IPv6 method to satisfy that requirement?
>
> Lots of IT managers really like NAT for managing the interface between
> their network and the big bad world outside.

I don't know about you but to me the phrase "really like" is an
emotional, not logical, description.  Network managers who "really like"
some way of doing something are already dangerously close to
fuzzy, closed-minded, subjective thinking.  I think you were being
a bit flip but I suspect you struck far closer to the mark than you
realize.  The debate over NAT-in IPv6 has always been more about
emotion than what is right and it is getting worse as IPv4 runout
approaches.

NAT was a paradigm that was forced
on to us because of an IPv4 shortage.  Originally it was regarded
as bizarre by network managers.  But with IPv6 that paradigm is no
longer needed and we must shed it.  It is understandable that someone
who grew up knowing nothing other than NAT would regard shedding it as
bizarre.

You read English left-to right.  Your English books have a spine on the 
left and open right to left.  The English in them all uses a single 
alphabet.  You regard this as normal because you were raised this way.

But if you were raised in Japan you would regard this as bizarre.  In
Japan, Japanese books come in all kinds of flavors.  Some have the spine
on the left and the Japanese in them is read left to right.  Some have
the spine on the right and are read back-to-front, right to left, top
to bottom.  Some even have the spine on the left and are read 
back-to-front, right to left, top to bottom.  And the Japanese in the 
book can
jump from one alphabet to another, right in the middle of a sentence.
You can have a word written in one alphabet on one part of the page and
the exact same word written in a different alphabet on another part of
the same page.  And when there is no Japanese word they will sometimes 
slap in an English one, written in English. Japanese regard this all as 
perfectly normal, and you undoubtedly would regard this as bizarre.

This is all about paradigm shifts.  If you have never heard that term
used then look it up, your going to be dealing with a lot of them with
IPv6.  I daresay that if a network manager cannot deal with these then 
he shouldn't be working in the high technology field at all in the first 
place, because high tech is full of them.

Ted