### On Thu, 2 May 2002 01:20:40 -0700, Scott Francis
### <darkuncle@darkuncle.net> casually decided to expound upon Peter Bierman
### <pmb+nanog@sfgoth.com> the following thoughts about "Re: Large ISPs
### doing NAT?":
The average customer buying a "web-enabled" phone doesn't need a
publicly-routeable IP. I challenge anybody to demonstrate why a cell phone
needs a public IP. It's a PHONE, not a server.
Time to start thinking a little further down the line. What if the phone
actually becomes an wireless IP gateway router? It routes packets from a
PAN (personal area network) riding on top of Bluetooth or 802.11{a,b} to the
3G network for transit. NAT would certainly become very messy.
*nod* NAT is a solution for current problems, in some situations. It may or
may not create more problems in the future than it solves in the present
(sign me up for one of those gateway router phones though - mmm...)
Again, while I'm not predicting what kind of network landscape we may see in
the future, NAT _does_ appear to solve problems in the present under certain
situations, and IMHO should not be dismissed out of hand just because it's
not "pure IP."
Forward thinking is critical - but those who do it at the expense of current
issues are called researchers and scientists, and generally are not running
production networks. 
Yuck. Current WAP-based phones can't even do websites well.
I've not been privy to 3G tests, so I don't know if GPRS/CDMA 1x does
better.
Of course, some of that is phone-specific. My Verizon Wireless Qualcomm
860's web browser always responded much more quickly than my current VZW
Nokia 3285's, and both phones feature microbrowsers authored by the same
company (Phone.com/Openwave).