> > * Nick Hilliard:
> >
> > >> The eyeball ISPs will find it trivial to NAT should they ever need to do
> > >> so [...]
> >
> > > Having made this bold claim, have you ever actually tried to run a natted
> > > eyeball network? The last two natted eyeball networks I worked with could
> > > never figure out which aspect of NAT hurt more: the technical side or the
> > > business side.
> >
> > I'm pretty sure the acceptance of NAT varies regionally. I think
> > there's a large ISP in Italy which has been doing NAT since the 90s.
> > So it's not just the mobile domain.
> >
> > It can be tricky to introduce a new NATted product and compete with
> > established players which do not NAT, though.
>
> It's another opportunity to monetize things. Give people the option of
> a "real" IP address for $5 extra a month in case they actually need it
> for gaming, etc., and default Grandma's average everyday connection to
> NAT.That'd be easy if you were just starting up an ISP. What do you do with
your existing customer base? If their current service includes a
dynamic public IPv4 address, you can't gracefully take it away, without
likey violating services T&Cs, government telco regulations etc. So
you'll have to go through a formal process of getting agreement with
customers to take them away.
I haven't seen any such documents or regulations.
Or do you have a flag fall day when after that new customers get NATted,
but old customers don't? Do you offer a LSN vs non-LSN product at
different price points? The price difference must be large enough for people to care about, or better
described, bother with it, yet the problem might be that that discount
might need to be so large that it doesn't actually cover the costs of
providing a service to that customer.
Maybe the price difference for existing customers is $0. You put them
on NAT, and if they squawk, put them back. Since you don't need to
do your whole customer base at once, you can even learn along the way.
Thinking about what sort of discount I'd find attractive enough on
roughly what I spend for ADSL Internet access, and putting myself in a
customers position, I'd figure it'd be at least 10%. You'd have to
state up front why you're offering a cheaper product, and for people to
make an informed judgement value, they'll need to understand the
problem i.e. the Internet running out of IPv4 addresses and what the
consequences of NAT are. Their eyes will probably glaze over at this
point, because all they want is "Internet" and don't care how it works,
and are probably not going to want to accept restrictions now that
might bite them in the future. At a certain point, the risks of going
with a cheaper limited service, when you don't understand or fully
understand it's restrictions, becomes higher than the price of the full
service. IOW, if it's too hard to understand why the LSN service is
cheaper, people will just pay the extra 10% - it's less riskier that
way. That extra 10% is insurance.
Many/most people are _already_ behind a NAT gateway.
The guy who wrote "The Internet for Dummies" went for a good while
behind a carrier NAT without realizing he was. And he's no dummy.
Practical experience by network operators who have deployed NAT
suggests that it's not ideal, but it's not horrible or impossible.
A vast number of people just want to do their stuff and don't really
care too much as long as things don't break. So what you need to do
is consider what it is most people do, and how much of that would
break. For an average household that's browsing the web and checking
mail, NAT == not noticeable. And there will be other things, too,
that work just fine.
... JG
