Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's never going to happen b/c there is too much legacy infrastructure and the benefit is marginal. All current home routers are configured to do NAT, so you're not going to be able to have a Skype 2.0 be P2P b/c then you'd need to explain to millions of people how to reconfigure their routers. Also P2P opens a whole new can of worms when it comes to security.
> That's never going to happen b/c there is too much legacy infrastructure and the benefit is marginal. It is going to have to happen, or there will be no internet. > All current home routers are configured to do NAT, so you're not going to be able to have a Skype 2.0 be P2P b/c then you'd need to explain to millions of people how to reconfigure their routers. Current home routers will be replaced within a year or tw…
"Current home routers will be replaced within a year or two."
Yeah right! My grandma isn't gunna be changing her router. And she'll be pissed if her stuff stopped working.
At then end of the day, if you have the choice between making a NAT friendly product that everyone can use and a non NAT friendly product that has some extra privacy - you'll be choosing the NAT friendly option.
"Firewalls have been around for a long time." The thing in windows that everyone disables?
NAT is transparent and fool proof. How can you ensure a 3rd party won't be able to connect to your fancy new P2P chat client? Security holes are pervasive in networking code so without NAT and a with a bit of sloppy code, the "bad guys" can at any time connect directly to your computer. Can you imagine the chaos that would happen if there was a zero day bug in a P2P Skype. With NAT 99% of your problems are gone. It's physically impossible to connect to a computer that doesn't have port forwarding.
Unless the US gov't comes in an enforces a switch to IPv6 (like it did with digital TVs and all those subsidized converter boxes) directly connecting to computers isn't going to happen.