Note to those folks who feel I am "recommending NPT66" here.
I'm not. In fact, I only have the one network with it at the moment; one I set up specifically so that I could figure out how it worked for the article. At the moment I have 16 IPv6 networks up, 4 of which are isolated testbeds. (8 new networks planned for this year alone!)
The article exists for one reason: to let the high priests of the internet know “oh, BTW, that NPT66 thing that? It’s in products and in use in SME shops all over the damned place already.” In other words: the utter failure of the priesthood to engage care for the issues faced by SME outfits resulted in them (shockingly!) going out and choosing the cheap and simple alternative that actually already existed! Note the two key words: “cheap” and “simple.”
“Right” and “wrong” aren’t in there. Surprisingly, SMEs and consumers don’t give a damn about IP morality.
I see a lot of talk about “use link local or ULA for internal addressing, and that solves everything.” No. It doesn’t. You would still have to re-address all your external-facing servers. I don’t think you quite grasp what that entails. Let me spell it out for you:
For ages upon ages, the big thing holding any SME back from spewing an unlimited number of servers all over the internet has been that they just can’t enough external IPs. They had to be conservative. They had to put time and effort into using as few servers as possible to use as few IPs as possible.
In an IPv6 world, we have functionally unlimited addresses at a time where we also have the ability to spin up hundreds of VMs on a single physical box. So what do these people do when you give them this ability? They spin up an instance of $server for every conceivable need, attach it to $external_ip and virtual sprawl sits on the internet to a magnitude you cannot possibly comprehend.
Renumbering these servers is an absolute bitch. It’s lunacy. Madness of the sort that makes SME admins pale, and then spontaneously vomit. “Flag days” are simply not allowed in 2012.
In a NPT66 environment, you don’t have to renumber. Ever. Because none of those servers have an external IP address. The only thing holding an external anything is the firewall. It holds the external subnet. It then 1:1 maps addresses back to the servers. The address issues NPT66 solves are not for internal use, but the addresses they will use to serve content to the outside world. Cheaply and simply.
Could you sit there and berate these admins for being “wrong?” Tell them they “aren’t doing it right” and that they need “education” to understand your point of view? Well…you could try. They don’t – and won’t – ever care to hear what you have to say. They are generally overstretched, working against impossible budget constraints, and usually have IT as a secondary or tertiary job.
The article is an exercise in pointing this out. That 13 years of belittling and berating instead of addressing cheap and simple are now biting everyone in the ass. Do I want the high priests angry? Yes. I want to slap each and every one across the face with their own hubris. That is 100% the intent.
Mocking and belittling me will earn you nothing. I am one individual. There are millions of SME admins out there, and I seriously doubt that the priesthood has the time to chasten and belittle each and every one of them thoroughly enough to cause them to change.
No; quit the opposite. The solution to this problem must come from the priesthood itself. You need to get your nerdrage on. You need to get out there and solve cheap and simple with extreme prejudice. You need to advocate and educate that your cheap and simple solution works, works well and works as easy as the alternatives.
Because cheap and simple IPv6 has shown up on our doorstep. And it is NPT66. 13 years of abject failure to address the practical issues have resulted in NAT being the easy choice for millions.
So hey, insult me if it makes you feel better. Question my manhood, technical ability, parentage, DNA sequencing and whatever else gets your happy on. I’m from the internet, I can handle it.
But when you’re done venting your spleen…please go make those cheap and simple products that the SME space needs, okay? Otherwise NAT will quite simply never die.
Cheers!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
