NAT is useful

Posted Jan 30, 2007 20:00 UTC (Tue) by job (guest, #670)
In reply to: NAT is useful by jreiser
Parent article: Fedora's metrics have ripple effect (Linux.com)

That sounds very strange. IP addresses should have no value. If you need more you should allocate more. We're not out of them yet.

I don't know where you live, but here in Europe it is absolutely forbidden to charge monthly fees for IP addresses. That is a clear violation of the RIPE rules.

NAT is useful

Posted Jan 30, 2007 20:46 UTC (Tue) by RobSeace (subscriber, #4435) [Link]

They probably get away with on some technicality, of not actually charging for the IPs themselves, but for providing subnet routing for them, or something... But, the fact remains that if you want a subnet of publically-routable IPs for your LAN, you basically have to buy "business-class" ISP service, at least here in the USA... (And, the larger the subnet you need, the more expsenive...) For home users, they usually just give you a single dynamic IP that can change periodically, and if you need more than one machine on your LAN, you have to use RFC-1918 private IPs and a NAT box...

NAT is useful

Posted Jan 31, 2007 8:59 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (1 responses)

They just pack IP address and some other "service" together. For example they can (by default) filter 80th and 25th port (for "security") but if you want "your own sever" - sure they'll give you "free" IP address, open access to 80th and 25th ports for "measly" sum of $5 per month per IP. Something like that...

And it's not done out of malice BTW. I've worked for small ISP at some point - they literally don't have enough public IP addresses. Yes, they can request them from RIPE (and they are doing it), but it's slow process and they need to somehow connect customers now. Hopefully IPv6 will solve this, but when ?

NAT is useful

Posted Feb 1, 2007 17:28 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

I've worked for small ISP at some point - they literally don't have enough public IP addresses. Yes, they can request them from RIPE (and they are doing it), but it's slow process and they need to somehow connect customers now.

That is not true, for several reasons. The ISP has a block of addresses to allocate from, and when it is getting close to fully allocated you get a new block to work from. You you really can't blame slow administrative procedures, it's pretty well thought out and as long as you do it properly you'll be ok.

NAT is useful

Posted Jan 31, 2007 11:44 UTC (Wed) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link] (2 responses)

You should tell that to all Danish ISPs... :/

NAT is useful

Posted Feb 1, 2007 17:45 UTC (Thu) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (1 responses)

I try to. I usually tell all ISPs that has tried this on me about it. When you cite the relevant RIPE policy documents they tend to listen. I once got a small ISP to stop breaking the rules. You should, too. IP addresses simply has no monetary value, and you should not try to make them. A market for these made up items would completely stifle the technical progress in for example deploying v6.

NAT is useful

Posted Feb 4, 2007 15:40 UTC (Sun) by JohnNilsson (guest, #41242) [Link]

Could you pleas point to the relevant secions?

I couldn't find it in this document:
http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ipv4-policies.html