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NFR Wizards Archives: Re: Free NAT

Re: Free NAT

Robert Graham (robert_david_grahamyahoo.com)
Wed, 8 Sep 1999 18:55:16 -0700 (PDT)

Ooh, now you've done it, triggering my pet-peeve. Time for you to suffer:

<counterrant>
While I don't particularly like NATs, most the disadvantages listed in
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-nat-implications-04.txt I would
describe as advantages, starting with "NATs break the flexible End-to-End model
of the Internet".

I remember fondly an IETF meeting back in the early 1990s where the dire fate
of the Internet address space depletion was discussed. This was the same
meeting that SNMPv2 was introduced. I say "fondly" because I was really amused
by the whole thing, namely that engineers really couldn't see the forest for
the trees.

In SNMPv2, authentication required a fixed network-layer address in the agent.
SNMPv2 was designed to include AppleTalk, which refuses to give fixed
network-layer addresses to end-nodes (it enforces the use of something similar
to DHCP). QED: SNMPv2 only works on AppleTalk in theory, not practice (and it
failed on TCP/IP in practice too, but that's a different story).

Likewise, the discussion of address-space depletion assumed that we never be
able to renumber IP addresses. One of the reasons was that too many protocols
(like SNMPv2) relied too heavily on fixed IP address, and that it would be
impossible to reassign all existing addresses.

The thing is, engineers get a thought into their head and assume that this is
the way the world works. In that case, it was that every device had to have a
fixed, unchanging, manually set IP address. Any proposed solutions that broke
that rule were quickly discarded for much the same reason that engineers hate
NAT/proxies today: it breaks people's fundamental assumptions of how the net
should work.

However, the concept of a fixed IP address WAS broken. For example, most
websites use "non-portable" IP addresses, and in fact change their IP address
rather regularly. DHCP, private addresses, and even NAT have likewise altered
the model. The problem is not that NAT breaks authentication schemes based on
IP addresses, the problem is that authentication schemes based themselves on IP
addresses in the first place.

Similarly, end-nodes have no real need to be "raw" on the Internet: they really
should be behind a NAT/proxy/firewall. Anybody that has put BlackICE Defender
(the personal intrusion detection product from my company) on their cable-modem
Home sees that they get scanned by hackers 10 times per day (Trojan probes,
IMAP probes, web-server /cgi-bin scans, etc.)

There is a similar document (I don't have the link off hand) that criticizes
the aweful new trend of using HTTP as the "transport" for application (example:
it breaks the ability of firewalls to filter them). Likewise, this document is
only valid if you stick to the "old-school" of thought. In particular, the
old-school of firewalls filtering by ports has already become obsolete.

IPv6 is a great solution for the old-school, but merely a good solution for the
new-school. The "network address" of "http://www.example.com/foo/bar" has long
ago supplanted addresses like 192.0.2.154, and IPv6 won't substantially change
that fact.
</counterrant>

Rob.

--- Carl Brewer <carlbl.echidna.id.au> wrote:
> I'm not coming down on Robert here!
>
> <rant>
> It's a shame that M$ are providing NAT, which even they know
> is a bad technology (it was a M$ employee that wrote the IETF
> case against NAT), and not IPv6. Please don't lose focus! NAT
> is a short-term ugly broken hack, push your vendor(s) for IPv6
> support!
>
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-iab-nat-implications-04.txt
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts-ietf-iab-case-for-ipv6-04.txt
>
> If you're using, or worse, planning to use, NAT and you haven't
> read the above two documents, read them :)
> </rant>
>
> Carl

===
Robert Graham
"Anxiously awaiting the millenium so I can start programming
dates with 2-digits again."
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