Re: the alleged evils of NAT, was Rate of growth on IPv6 not fast enough?

[Mark Smith <nanog () 85d5b20a518b8f6864949bd940457dc124746ddc nosense org>]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:04:25 -0500
Dave Pooser <dave.nanog () alfordmedia com> wrote:

> > IPv6's fundamental goal is to restore end-to-end.
>
> For some. For many, IPv6's fundamental goal is to keep doing what we've been
> doing without running out of addresses. The fact that the two camps have
> orthogonal goals is probably part of the reason the rate of growth on IPv6
> is so slow.

Well they should realise that end-to-end is what made the Internet the
success in the first place. On the Original Internet, when you had an
IP address, one moment you could be a client, another you could be a
server, or another you could be a peer - or you could be any or all
three roles at the same time. What role you wanted to play was
completely and absolutely up to you - no third parties to ask
permission of, no router upgrades involved. You just started the
(client/server/peer-to-peer) software, and off you went.

The applications exist at the edge of the Internet - in the software
operating on the end-nodes. The Internet itself is supposed to
be a dumb, best effort packet transport between the edges - nothing
more. That is why the Original Internet was good at running any
application you threw at it, including new ones - because it never
cared what those applications were. It just tried to do it's job of
getting packets from edge sources to edge destinations, regardless of
what was in them.