Re: NATs *ARE* evil!

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

> > IMHO what we need to change is the *implicit* association between
> > "host" related identifiers and "network topology" related identifiers -
> > so that coders treat them as separate entities, and provide a way
> > for the two to be different at the IP layer - while still allowing
> > the optimization to take place where it makes sense.  then you
> > only need to maintain the mapping for the case where the identifiers
> > are different.
> > 
> > I'm still waiting for folks to see this "overloading" as a design compromise
> 
> A fundamentally different approach that does achieve this separation
> is described in draft-guruprasad-addressless-internet-00.txt.

thank you, I think you've advertised this draft quite adequately for the 
time being. I'm quite willing to look at it, but there are numerous 
other drafts that are also on my list.

> > rather than a pure evil.  not overloading at all would be even more evil.
> 
> You don't have adequate grounds for the second statement unless you can
> formally establish that you have considered all *possible* alternative
> architectures. 

I was referring to the set of identifiers I mentioned in my earlier
message, all of which are IP addresses, or contain IP addresses,
in the current Internet architecture.  And no, I don't have to consider 
every possible alternative architecture to conclude that (a) most or all
of these identifiers are necessary, and (b) reserving space for each
one separately, and maintaining all of the mappings between them,
would be onerous.

Keith