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Re: Access to the IPv4 net for IPv6-only systems, was: Re: WG Action: Conclusion of IP Version 6 (ipv6)

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Mon Oct 01 14:40:00 2007

Thus spake "Iljitsch van Beijnum" <[email protected]>
For the purpose of this particular discussion, NAT in IPv4 is basically a given: coming up with an IPv4-IPv6 transition
mechanism that only works with if no IPv4 NAT is present both
defeats the purpose (if we had that kind of address space we
wouldn't have a problem in the first place) and it's completely
unrealistic.

The issue is that introducing NAT in IPv6, even if it's only in the context of translating IPv6 to IPv4, for a number of protocols, requires ALGs in the middle and/or application awareness. These things don't exist in IPv6, but they do exist in IPv4. So it's a better engineering choice to have IPv4 NAT than IPv6 NAT.

Of course ALGs will exist in IPv6: they'll be needed for stateful firewalls, which aren't going away in even the most optimistic ideas of what an IPv6-only network will look like.

I don't see the problem with proxying, except that it only works for TCP. Yes, you need a box in the middle, but that's true of any solution where you have an IPv6-only host talk to an IPv4-only
host. If both sides use a dual stack proxy, it's even possible to
use address-based referrals. E.g., the IPv4 host asks the proxy
to set up a session towards 2001:db8:31::1 and voila, the IPv4
host can talk to the IPv6 internet. Not possible with a NAT-PT
like solution.

Only one side needs to proxy/translate; if both sides have a device to do it, one of them will not be used. Better, if both sides support the same version (either v4 or v6), that would be used without any proxying or translating at all.

Tunneling IPv4 over IPv6 is a lot cleaner than translating between the two. It preserves IPv4 end-to-end. :-)

And when we run out of v4 addresses in a few years, what do you propose we do? It makes little sense to tunnel v4 over v6 until v6 packets become the majority on the backbones -- and the only way that'll happen is if everyone dual-stacks or is v6-only. If everyone has v6 connectivity, then why do we need to route v4 anymore, even over tunnels?

S

Stephen Sprunk "God does not play dice." --Albert Einstein
CCIE #3723 "God is an inveterate gambler, and He throws the
K5SSS dice at every possible opportunity." --Stephen Hawking