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

[David Conrad <drc () virtualized org>]

Paul,

On Apr 29, 2010, at 8:29 AM, Paul Timmins wrote:
> If you change ISPs, send out an RA with the new addresses, wait a bit, then send out an RA with lifetime 0 on the old 
> address.

Even if this works (and I know a lot of applications that use the socket() API that effectively cache the address 
returned by DNS for the lifetime of the application), how does this help situations where IPv6 address literals are 
specified in configuration files, e.g., resolv.conf, glue for authoritative DNS servers, firewalls/filters, network 
management systems, etc.?  See sections 5 and 7 of 
http://www.rfc-editor.org/internet-drafts/draft-carpenter-renum-needs-work-05.txt

The point here is that if there is a non-zero cost associated with renumbering, there will be non-zero incentive to 
deploy technologies such as NATv6 to reduce that cost.  Some folks have made the argument that for sites large enough 
for the cost of renumbering to be significant, they should be able to justify provider independent space and be willing 
to accept the administrative and financial cost. While this may be the case (I have some doubts that many of the folks 
using PA space now will be all that interested in dealing with the RIR system, but I may be biased), it does raise 
concerns about routing system growth and forces ISPs to be willing to accept long IPv6 prefixes from end users (which 
some ISPs have already said they won't do).

Regards,
-drc