Technical Summary
Although there are many perceived benefits to Network Address
Translation (NAT), its primary benefit of "amplifying" available
address space is not needed in IPv6. In addition to NAT's many
serious disadvantages, there is a perception that other benefits
exist, such as a variety of management and security attributes that
could be useful for an Internet Protocol site. IPv6 does not support
NAT by design and this document shows how Network Architecture
Protection (NAP) using IPv6 can provide the same or more benefits
without the need for NAT.
Working Group Summary
This document is a product of the v6ops working group.
Protocol Quality
David Kessens reviewed this document for the IESG.
Note to RFC Editor:
In section 2.6, first paragraph, please change:
OLD:
While the widespread use of IPv4+NAT has reduced the potential
consumption rate, the ongoing depletion of the IPv4 address range has
already taken the remaining pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses well
below 25%.
While mathematical models based on historical IPv4 prefix consumption
periodically attempt to predict the future exhaustion date of the
IPv4 address pool, a direct result of this continuous resource
consumption is that the administrative overhead for acquiring
globally unique IPv4 addresses will continue increasing in direct
response to tightening allocation policies.
NEW:
While the widespread use of IPv4+NAT has reduced the potential
consumption rate, the ongoing depletion of the IPv4 address range has
already taken the remaining IANA pool of unallocated IPv4 addresses
well below 25%.
While mathematical models based on historical IPv4 prefix consumption
periodically attempt to predict the future exhaustion date of the
IPv4 address pool, a possible result of this continuous resource
consumption is that the overhead for acquiring globally unique
IPv4 addresses will at some point increase noticeably due to
tightening allocation policies.