Network Working Group                                     Christian Vogt
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Expires: September 5, 2009                                 March 4, 2009


               On the Harmfulness of Address Translation
           draft-vogt-address-translation-harmfulness-00.txt

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Abstract

   Address translation is widely considered harmful because its existing
   variants conflict with well-established design principles of the
   Internet engineering community.  Still, address translation has
   become common practice despite technical problems because it



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Internet-Draft  On the Harmfulness of Address Translation     March 2009


   constitutes an easy-to-deploy solution to a set of common operational
   needs.  Since some of these needs will continue to exist in IP
   version 6, there is concern within the Internet engineering community
   about the potential proliferation of harmful technology from IP
   version 4 to IP version 6.  This paper investigates these concerns.
   It analyzes feasible address translator designs, explains why the
   problems of address translation, as used today, are to a significant
   extent specific to IP version 4, and shows how the problems can be
   mitigated in IP version 6.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3




































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Internet-Draft  On the Harmfulness of Address Translation     March 2009


.  Introduction

   Address translation is widely considered harmful because its existing
   variants conflict with well-established design principles of the
   Internet engineering community.  Still, address translation has
   become common practice despite technical problems because it
   constitutes an easy-to-deploy solution to a set of common operational
   needs.  Since some of these needs will continue to exist in IP
   version 6, there is concern within the Internet engineering community
   about the potential proliferation of harmful technology from IP
   version 4 to IP version 6.  This paper investigates these concerns.
   It analyzes feasible address translator designs, explains why the
   problems of address translation, as used today, are to a significant
   extent specific to IP version 4, and shows how the problems can be
   mitigated in IP version 6.


Author's Address

   Christian Vogt
   Ericsson Research
   200 Holger Way
   San Jose, CA  95134
   United States

   Email: christian.vogt@ericsson.com

























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