Re: Nat

[Daniel Corbe <dcorbe () hammerfiber com>]

> On Dec 20, 2015, at 1:22 PM, Matthew Petach <mpetach () netflight com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Daniel Corbe <dcorbe () hammerfiber com> wrote:
> > > On Dec 20, 2015, at 11:57 AM, Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net> wrote:
> > >
> > > There is little that can be done about much of this now, but at least we can label some of these past decisions as 
> > > ridiculous and hopefully a lesson for next time.
> >
> > There isn’t going to be a next time.
>
> *points and snickers quietly*
>
> You're either an incredible optimist,
> or you're angling to be the next oft-
> misquoted "640KB should be enough
> for anyone" voice.
>
> We got a good quarter of a century
> out of IPv4.  I think we *might* hit
> the century mark with IPv6...maybe.
> But before we hit that, I suspect we'll
> have found enough shortcomings
> and gaps that we'll need to start
> developing a new addressing format
> to go with the newer networking
> protocols we'll be designing to
> fix those shortcomings.
>
> Until the sun goes poof, there's *always*
> going to be a next time.  We're never going
> to get it _completely_ right.  You just have
> to consider a longer time horizon than our
> own careers.
>
> Matt

I’m only going to say one more thing on this subject because this is essentially a side bar that has very little to do 
with the subject matter of the OP.  

If we hadn’t run out of address space we’d still be trying to fix IPv4.  The numbers don’t lie.  It’s not very likely 
that we’re going to be space constrained on the IPv6 Internet like we are on the IPv4 internet.  Nobody is going to 
want to repeat the pain of the last 17 years of trying to convince people to run IPv6.

Just about every technical challenge with the underlying protocol stack is fixable.  Except for one: what happens when 
we run out addresses.  For all of its flaws, IPv6 addresses this one particular issue quite well.