RFC 1631: The IP Network Address Translator (NAT)
datatracker.ietf.org
This memo proposes another short-term solution, address reuse, that complements CIDR or even makes it unnecessary. The address reuse solution is to place Network Address Translators (NAT) at the borders of stub domains. This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo does not specify an Internet standard of any kind.

From the conclusion:

NAT may be a good short term solution to the address depletion and scaling problems. This is because it requires very few changes and can be installed incrementally. NAT has several negative characteristics that make it inappropriate as a long term solution, and may make it inappropriate even as a short term solution. Only implementation and experimentation will determine its appropriateness.

  • @[email protected]
    10•6 months ago

    A few people need to get off their horses and come up with and agree to IPv4². It’s exactly the same as IPv4 except there’s 2 more octets of address space - 48bits for addresses*. Job done. You’d see wide spread adoption in under 2 years and then we can forget about it all and move on with our lives safe from the clutches of IPv6.

    I don’t give a crap that doesn’t neatly fit into 32 or 64 bit architectures. It’s more than doable at plenty fast speed and it keeps everything manageable.

    • @FooBarrington
      17•6 months ago

      And what would be the advantage? It wouldn’t be routable through legacy systems, and you’d run out of addresses in a couple of years again.

      • @[email protected]
        16•6 months ago

        Nothing. It fixes the myriad of horrible hacks that are required for ipv4 to somehow still hang on.

        Of course companies are sad because transition costs money, even though as usual the open source community did most of the work for them.

      • @[email protected]
        2•6 months ago

        It tried to fix everything wrong with IPv4, like shitty multicasting. This made it extra complicated.

        If it had just been 128-bit addresses, it probably would have been widely deployed in the 90s. Don’t need to bother at this point, though, just get it done.

        • @laughterlaughter
          5•6 months ago

          One hour video. Jesus. tl;dw (generated by AI - disclaimer):

          " The speaker in the YouTube video discusses why IPv6 adoption is slow due to technical complexities, high costs, and lack of immediate benefits for businesses. He talks about the challenges of maintaining both IPv4 and IPv6, why businesses are hesitant to adopt IPv6, its technical benefits, lack of backward compatibility with IPv4, and the importance of universal adoption for success. Some large companies have not adopted IPv6, and there are concerns about minimal performance gains and transition costs, leading to a prediction of IPv4 and IPv6 coexisting for the next 20 years. "

          • @[email protected]
            5•6 months ago

            Next 20 years? Dude, I was being taught IPv6 back in 1997, as part of my network course. It was supposed to be the future back then, and so we were trained, expecting to have to implement it wherever we’d go work.

            Yeah… I didn’t end up in networks, but I sure as shit did not see it used even once in my career so far. Not a single time. It’s kinda hilarious, really.

    • @[email protected]
      4•6 months ago

      If we rolled back the clock to 1998 or so, that’d probably be worthwhile. At this point, everything is set for IPv6, and we just need to do it.