Why does this blog require javascript?
Unfortunately because of Google. Dunno why they did that, it doesn't make it any better; but it's not really the author's fault either.
By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
31–40 of 188 posts
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can MIT people use IPv6 when it hasn't been rolled out on campus yet? How does it make any sense to put the campus (Ethernet) network behind a NAT, when MIT still has 18.0.0.0/9, half of what MIT has before but more than plenty to go around?
NAT will make future sales of IPv4 blocks easier? As you say, MIT doesn't need all those 8 million IP addresses, and eventually will adopt IPv6 anyway. Might as well sell surplus v4 space while it's still valuable.
But why is MIT making money on those addresses more valuable than giving its students an opportunity to experiment and innovate? Why would selling those "unused" spaces to Amazon further the cause of IPv6?
Also MIT hasn't even rolled out IPv6 yet...
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here -- MIT does not currently have IPv6. Although MIT did receive a /24 IPv6 allocation, https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET6-2603-4000-1 , it's not routable everywhere on campus yet. Unfortunately, IPv6 deployment is still below 20% (as measured by Google, https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html ) so a publically-accessible IPv6 address is not yet sufficient.
20% is starting to reach critical mass.
Those are the fast moving and the new parts of the internet. I bet that in a few years IPv6 deployment will slow down as the remaining systems become older, less maintained or even opinionated (like me). For many years to come some kind of IPv4 connectivity will remain a requirement to access all of the internet/web.
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#34kudos to this well-researched post. As a student with a server in a dorm room, I really hope they don't take away my public IP address.
There are advantages to being on a private network behind a firewall ... and they could still offer a DNS name and routing to your computer if it was on a private network. It's likely that the only difference is that you'd also have to specify what ports you want exposed to the outside world. This is a win for you from a security perspective - having additional layers of security won't hurt you.
NAT is not an additional layer of security.
I run our servers on public IP addresses, behind a firewall. Troubleshooting and debugging is made much easier, and there's never any conflict with VPNs etc.
> It's likely that the only difference is that you'd also have to specify what ports you want exposed to the outside world
Port 80, please. With NAT, you can't offer that to more than one computer.
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#35A lot of fuss, but if you look at the presentation slide in the middle of the page ( https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PyyPpTv1p7g/WU7hMEBnm4I/AAAAAAAAE... for reference) it is clear that MIT is not stifling anything or shutting anyone's mouth. MIT is just moving to IPv6. Actually... MIT forcing an entire generation of future engineers to deal with IPv6... That will literally push innovation.
> MIT is just moving to IPv6.
The "just" is incorrect. There are four bullets on the slide: DHCP, IPV6, private IPV4/NAT, and firewall. From the diagram it looks to me like even if you move to IPV6 (which, as others have noted, MIT has not yet rolled out, so at this point you can't), you will still be behind the firewall, so setting up a service visible to the Internet will still be more difficult than it used to be.
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#36A lot of fuss, but if you look at the presentation slide in the middle of the page ( https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PyyPpTv1p7g/WU7hMEBnm4I/AAAAAAAAE... for reference) it is clear that MIT is not stifling anything or shutting anyone's mouth. MIT is just moving to IPv6. Actually... MIT forcing an entire generation of future engineers to deal with IPv6... That will literally push innovation.
Moving IPv4 to NAT and moving to IPv6 seems orthogonal.
[deleted]
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can MIT people use IPv6 when it hasn't been rolled out on campus yet? How does it make any sense to put the campus (Ethernet) network behind a NAT, when MIT still has 18.0.0.0/9, half of what MIT has before but more than plenty to go around?
NAT will make future sales of IPv4 blocks easier? As you say, MIT doesn't need all those 8 million IP addresses, and eventually will adopt IPv6 anyway. Might as well sell surplus v4 space while it's still valuable.
When the two are in direct conflict, is it more important for MIT to maximize the value it can extract out of its properties, or for it to promote adoption of improvements to technology?
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#38Projects have broken over this, with no real gain for implementing it. You would expect more rationality from MIT, of all places.
>You would expect more rationality from MIT, of all places
Tell that to Aaron Schwartz.
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#39A lot of fuss, but if you look at the presentation slide in the middle of the page ( https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PyyPpTv1p7g/WU7hMEBnm4I/AAAAAAAAE... for reference) it is clear that MIT is not stifling anything or shutting anyone's mouth. MIT is just moving to IPv6. Actually... MIT forcing an entire generation of future engineers to deal with IPv6... That will literally push innovation.
> Actually... MIT forcing an entire generation of future engineers to deal with IPv6 Then why are they doing NAT? Edit: Although moving to NAT might push innovation too, or at least some clever hacks. Speaking of that, if you want use a relay to do NAT traversal then is TCP over ARQ (on UDP) as bad as TCP over TCP?
They're doing NAT for IPv4. The IPv6 network space listed in the slide is publicly routable and almost certainly untranslated. It's possible it's firewalled though.
Re: By installing NAT, MIT stifles innovation
#40Perhaps doing it over .onion? Actually I have been experimenting this for my pet projects. Downside is that it's relatively slow but getting "global" address is click (well a few lines of config) away...
But that would just be ridiculous, considering that experimenting with Tor relays is like a favorite student passtime...