[AusNOG] FW: [Ap-ipv6tf] official shutdown date for IPv4. The date he is pushing for is April 4, 2024. "IPv4 can't go on forever, " Latour said. "

[Ross Wheeler]

On Wed, 5 Nov 2014, Mike Everest wrote:

> I may be opening a can of worms here, but for a bit of fun…
> I like NAT.  It solves a lot more problems that it causes (for me)

+1

I am truly scared of a world with eleventy-billion unpatched, unprotected, 
vulnerable/exploitable devices suddenly "directly reachable" by all those 
malware-infected, script-kiddies etc.

Apart from any other conveniences NAT offers (more later), it gives the 
majority of the world "a degree" of protection from all these old windows 
boxes (particularly, but there are lots of other exploitable devices out 
there that haven't (yet) been widely impacted)

Sure, you can firewall/filter/protect IPv6. But how many of those 
eleventy-billion unpatched systems are GOING TO BE PROTECTED?
If they can't "update" their system, don't "GET" the bit about having to 
keep AV software up-to-date etc, how the HELL can we expect them to secure 
IPv6?  (Hint: we can't)

Portability: being able to just "move" from one provider to another and 
not have to reconfigure all your home devices, because they just get NATed 
by your router just makes it SO easy for people. I'm PARTICULARLY looking 
at the "not-quite-trivial" home/SOHO networks here. A single machine or 
two, probably not so much, but there are an increasing number of people 
with everything from home automation systems, cameras, PVRs etc that for a 
variety of reasons seem to end up with static IPs, NAT makes their life 
very easy - in a way that IPv6 probably won't.

It's all fine and good for those of us in the industry who do this all day 
every day, but there are a LOT of people who wil never "get" the IPv6 clue
they need to do this stuff properly, but we're going to be the ones who 
have to pick up the pieces afterwards, and clean up the mess.