suicidalfish (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

NAT blocks certain payloads within an IP data packet, and with talks of transition mechanisms, IPv6 is the payload of IPV4 therefore NAT will not allow that traffic. I agree with revellioant that people need to be educated that NAT is not a security feature, purely an invention to breathe new life into a dying v4, allowing private addresses to access the world through one public address.

revellionalt (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

yeah true. but if you told em that their NAT is not the security part at all (which is the truth). and just the fact there's state-tracking involved. then they could see that NAT itself ain't what is securing their network from unsolicited traffic. but the fact the gateway device itself tracks the connections and only allows established and known conversations only. The sooner people are educated that NAT is not security the better.

DarrenRBaker (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

What's happened is strange - the limitation you mention has somehow evolved into a security 'feature' for many organizations, and the idea of being directly connected to the 'net without that virtual condom is really frightening to them.

bzenns (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

That was some cleverly collaborated farce-menship I have ever seen in a while. 2 thumbs up! ;)

revellionalt (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

so NAT nicely allows lets say App A on a host at site A behind NAT to reach a host also behind NAT on Site B running App A to connect to each other directly without any extra middle-hands or fuzz?, please enlighten me.

dmmkrk (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

and the answer is: run ipv4 and ipv6 side by side - ipv6 for devices that need end-to-end connectivity and ipv4 for everything else. oh - and stop this bs about NAT breaking things - it works great. a bunch of used car salesmen.

SimonEiri (November 30, 1999 at 12:00 am)

Excellent little panel. It's refreshing to see a company putting problems and engineering first. With everyone working on the problem, more progress can be made, faster.