Re: [BEHAVE] Comments on the NAT66 draft

[Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter@gmail.com>]

Wes,

On 2008-11-07 03:40, Wes Beebee (wbeebee) wrote:
> I guess RFC 4864 doesn't go quite far enough - it says (paraphrasing): 
> You shouldn't need NAT66 because there are other ways to accomplish your
> goals which may be existing or under development at IETF.  

And the weakness in that is that although we have the gap analysis
in 4864, we do *not* have an adequate work plan to fill those gaps.
(ADs: I hope you are reading this.) Until we do, the emperor is
missing a few vital items of clothing.

> 
> Are we prepared to make a stronger statement here?  Are we prepared to
> say: 
> If you use NAT66, then be prepared for interoperability problems with
> IETF specifications because we WILL NOT design around your box, and,
> furthermore, that all the reasons you would want such a box have been
> fully accomodated through other means which are all in a good enough
> state for you to deploy today.

I think it's unrealistic to say that. We can put strong health warnings
in the draft, but we can't assert that other means exist for everything
until that becomes true (see above). We know very well that we can't
make that 'WILL NOT' assertion, because that isn't how our industry,
or the IETF, works. I'm unhappy about this but we have to be realistic.

MAT66 works for me because it makes it clear that this is not NAPT66.

   Brian

> 
> - Wes
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Iljitsch van Beijnum [mailto:iljitsch@muada.com] 
> Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 9:15 AM
> To: Wes Beebee (wbeebee)
> Cc: EricLKlein@softhome.net; Margaret Wasserman; v6ops@ops.ietf.org;
> Behave WG
> Subject: Re: [BEHAVE] Comments on the NAT66 draft
> 
> On 6 nov 2008, at 14:59, Wes Beebee (wbeebee) wrote:
> 
>> As we move to IPv6, NAT44, NAT64, and NAT46 will eventually go away.  
>> The problem with helping NAT66 (even when that is not your
>> intent) is that once it catches on, it'll be in the Internet forever 
>> and will never go away.
> 
>> "NATs necessary for IPv6, says IETF chair"
>> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/072109-nat-housley-qna.html
> 
>> Once NAT66 gets out, I can imagine even more damaging headlines (which
> 
>> conveniently miss all the subtleties of the message in section 3 of 
>> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mrw-behave-nat66-00.txt)
>> : "IETF Standardizes IPv6-to-IPv6 NAT".
> 
> Well, if that's what we want to avoid, we shouldn't be coy and come out
> and say that IPv6 NAT won't be accommodated in IETF protocols.
> 
> What seems to be happening today is that we all look the other way and
> pretend the issue doesn't exist, because we either assume that of course
> there won't be any IPv6 NAT or of course there will. So we are on our
> way ending up with the same situation that we encountered with
> IPv4: suddenly, it's no longer realistically possible to deploy a
> protocol that isn't NAT-friendly, but there are so many different NATs
> that it's impossible to be friendly to them all, and many of them
> operate is very suboptimal ways that could have been avoided with some
> forethought.
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