Re: IPv4 flag day

[Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

> Is NAT still such a severe problem that we needed a different protocol?
> Ask 1000 NANOG engineers, get 1000 different answers. In practice, no.
> IPv4 still works.


 There are also plenty of well established things that NAT causes problems
for, along with less than desirable protocol and standardization choices
that have been made because of the existence of NAT.

We've gotten really good at engineering ways to disguise these issues so
users don't notice them. On one had that's good because user/application
experiences are better, on the other hand it sucks because people think a
non-visible problem isn't a problem anymore.

On Tue, Jun 16, 2026 at 10:53 AM Brian Knight via NANOG <
nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

> On 2026-06-16 01:33, Saku Ytti via NANOG wrote:
> > Does anyone feel responsibility for the dual stack mess we've created?
> > It wasn't here when we found the Internet, and we're going to leave it
> > here after we leave, does not really jive with the whole leave
> > campground cleaner than found it ethos.
>
> It was the most comprehensive solution for the NAT problem. But NAT
> became the accepted way we connect to the Internet.
>
> World + dog knows how to connect to it, troubleshoot it, look at NAT
> tables on their edge firewall or router.
>
> Is NAT still such a severe problem that we needed a different protocol?
> Ask 1000 NANOG engineers, get 1000 different answers. In practice, no.
> IPv4 still works.
>
> Economics are a slightly different story, but so far, IPv4 space isn't
> prohibitively expensive.
>
> -Brian
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