Subject: RE: (ngtrans) shipworm and anycast Was: Review of draft-ietf-ngtrans-shipworm-03.txt

From: "Christian Huitema" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Feb 2002 10:48:47 -0800

I have some sympathy for Erik's remark that if we make the transition
tools "too good", then people will find the transition state comfortable
and will just never finish the voyage. On the other hand, we need to
actually start this voyage. To do this, we have to convince either the
service providers or the application developers to move to IPv6. We can
convince some providers to invest in IPv6, but convincing all of them is
extremely hard in the absence of "customer demand" -- and customer
demand is caused by applications.

I have observed that we can convince many application developers if we
solve one of their key problems, the traversal of NAT. (We would like to
also solve the traversal of firewalls, but that is a very different
issue.) They would much rather push the NAT traversal issue "down in the
stack" than have to put NAT-handling warts in their applications. But
they will only be convinced if the "solution-down-the-stack" appears to
be good enough. In particular: developers of videogames will only be
convinced if the local traffic remains local, and if the bulk of the
traffic is as direct as possible.

-- Christian Huitema

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2002 17:10:21 -0500

> stack" than have to put NAT-handling warts in their applications. 

fixing the stack is the easy part.  providing the tunnel endpoints 
for everyone in a way that scales, provides stable addresses, and
doesn't impair security is extremely difficult.

it might even be easier to fix the NATs.

Keith

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From: Randy Bush <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Feb 2002 04:01:05 +0000

> it might even be easier to fix the NATs.

bingo!

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From: Pekka Savola <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002 17:00:53 +0200 (EET)

> it might even be easier to fix the NATs.

.. which is something we probably can't assume: if using punch-through-NAT 
service requires you have a new and shiny NAT box supporting feature X, 
probably either:

 1) in 1.5-3 years there may be sufficiently large vendor support for 
these, and the whole point is moot anyway (there's an IPv6 router in the 
network)

 2) you've switched to an operator that does provide IPv6 or doesn't do
NAT (in 1.5-3 years, if IPv6 kicks off so that punch-through-NAT's would
be useful, there should be plenty)

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "Tell me of difficulties surmounted,
Netcore Oy                   not those you stumble over and fall"
Systems. Networks. Security.  -- Robert Jordan: A Crown of Swords