OK.. Again, I dont disagree - I dont know the details of, or even that there is an RFC concerning standard timeouts in NAT, however all of this argument is just to determine how densely you can overload one IP address, not that in concept the typical home user will notice it or not. I have seen companies with 1000+ employees get NAT'd down to a nat pool of one IP address and have no discernable problem, so I dont think a neighborhood of 1000 homes that mostly wont be in use simultaneously would have a problem sharing one address.. But, even if it's only a 10:1 reduction, it's still easier/cheaper than migrating the typical consumer to IPv6 and retrain the support staff..

Exactly my point.. The consumer doesn't care, and the TYPICAL consumer is price driven, so why upgrade them to an IPv6 network, and retrain all of your support staff, when your typical customer is happy if they can get to Facebook and google? NAT on an IPv4 network is fine for most people.. Those who care, will be willing to spend some extra per month to get a real IP address.. EVENTUALLY, there might be some functionality that the consumer demands, which can ONLY be provided on IPv6, at which time, there would be a reason for the typical consumer to care, and at that point, there will be a financial driver to force the upgrade. Until then, I'm betting no. I've been hearing the same IPv6 is coming mantra for 15 years or more, and it's still the same story..

I hear what you're saying, but I think network speed will do away with the effect of that.. my cable modem keeps getting faster and faster, so aside from an RTP video stream or something, none of my connections are open too long. Also, that problem just limits the value of "many" in the "one to many" nat scenario, and might force the ISP to build NAT pools per neighborhood.. I'm not saying Comcast is going to NAT us all down to one IP, but certainly we dont all need our own in a consumer grade service.

I like your listed steps, but I dont think anyone outside of the academic and/or government world will ever see "step 2" unless there's a killer-app that forces the consumer market to demand it.

That's where you are wrong.. The CONSUMER has the power to force it to happen. The reason it isn't happening, is because it isn't necessary. Unless and until someone comes up with the "killer app" that there is no way to run over IPv4, the path of least cost is always going to be to extend the IPv4 network. If someone big like Facebook were to say today that starting tomorrow, if you weren't on IPv6, you wouldn't have access, everyone would be outraged until next Monday, when "facebookclone.com" opened up and took all their old customers.. there's just no reason to even go there..

Yep.. I've played a multi-player game, and it worked just fine through MY NAT device, so why wouldn't it work through the ISPs.. If you are NOT running through a NAT these days, I'd be surprised and worried. I bet if you do a survey, 999 out of 1000 home routers have no inbound ports open, which means that it makes no difference to the user, and the ISP is doing the rest of us a favor, hopefully blocking SOMETHING from being infected on those machines that would then start attacking the rest of us.. I'm all for it..

All of what you say is true, but it ignores the reality that well over 99% of the customers are residential customers, or even small businesses who will NEVER run a server on location. Switching customers to NAT is not only easier than moving to IPv6 (read: cheaper), but also provides the carrier an opportunity to introduce a tiered "premium" service at an additional cost, where a customer could get a real IP address if they really need one. Personally, I think this is the inevitable future. 20 years from now, we'll look at IPv6 as a good protocol that never really caught on, because in the end, nobody really needed it.

If it were cheaper than Nuclear, it would by definition be more profitable than nuclear, and the technology would fund itself... Therefore, the fact that nobody has been successful on a large scale, even WITH the horribly corrupt and wasteful government subsidies prove to me that you're simply wrong. Sure, it is true, that you could have a couple of acres of windmills and batteries supply a house or two with electricity, and you might even break even someday if you discount the maintenance costs, but in the real world, we need more power than wind can provide.

It might SEEM like NASA projects cost a lot, but when you care to include actual FACTS, you'll learn that the ENTIRE NASA BUDGET in 2008 was only $17 Billion. In a country that bails out GM for $800 Billion, and BORROWS $4 BILLION EVERY DAY, I'd say NASA had a pretty good record for return on investment.

Neil Armstrong is a true American hero and patriot, and I'm glad he had the opportunity and guts to tell Congress the very sad truth that under the current administration, our government has allowed NASA to completely fall apart. According to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA) the ENTIRE 2008 BUDGET of NASA (NOT just the shuttle) was $17.3 Billion. This administration has wasted over $800 Billion in failed stimulus, all while castrating this agency which has provided America with so much technology that has been carried in to the private sector and our daily lives, as well as the non-tangible benefit of the PUBLIC PRIDE that our successes there have brought.

These days, our government spends over $11 BILLION PER DAY and BORROWS over $4 Billion of that money.. That's right - EVERY DAY.. Although I'm not in favor of INCREASING this number, it seems that NASA did an INCREDIBLE GOOD with what amounts to about 0.004% of the annual budget of our government, especially when compared to the money we WASTE on STUPID POLITICAL PAYOFFS to companies like Solyndra, getting HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF OUR DOLLARS as payoff to political friends of Obama. If anyone thinks that $17.3 Billion can't be shaved off the top to save NASA, they're very wrong.

I'm not an "Obama Hater" just to be an Obama hater.. I'm a GOVERNMENT WASTE HATER, and am just as against the $800 bailout that Bush initiated before he left office too. We need to stop taking partisan sides and blaming the other side, and we need to look at our priorities and fix the problems and restore pride in America. If we had any leadership in Washington today, we'd have a "Kennedy-like speech" in which we'd be challenged once again to stop looking to government for help, and be told that by the end of THIS DECADE that we would land AMERICANS on MARS, otherwise we're going to be RENTING research facilities up there from the Chinese in 20 years.

-Steve
BothSidesAreWrong@cherokeesystems.com

Only Chevy, after taking our bailout dollars and closing thousands of dealerships at the expense of tens of thousands of jobs would spend money to have SCIENTISTS try to quantify in a math formula, what constitutes a perfect handshake... Your tax dollars at work.. or rather NOT at work.. What a waste of money and time.

We call can't get our phones at the same time.. You log off, and I'll let you know when I'm done.. :-)

I love the space program too, but if we did that, we'd be a territory of China right now, and all living a communist life with no space program..

AMEN.. Especially the part about letting the deadbeats get foreclosed on... I love your idea of buying the shuttle and renting it back. It's PERFECT, ESPECIALLY if Obama kills Orion.. They'll need to rent it back for 20 or so more years.. Of course, dont get into any fixed-cost contracts, because with them printing new money like they are doing, inflation WILL go up... -Steve www.bothsidesarewrong.com Dont blame me - I wrote in Ron Paul...

You're "mostly" right.. but, dont forget, there's a difference between throughput and latency... Imagine your garden hose. a 200 foot hose may not slow down the water, and you're still getting the THROUGHPUT that you need (gallons per minute), but the water that comes out of the sprinkler head end may come out 20 seconds after it went into the other end of the hose (20 second latency)... For some jobs, with sequential read/write, throughput may be all you need (and may be where the 1% rating comes from on the original poster's PGP stat) but for something that needs to stop and start, and/or have quick access to random data, waiting for a decryption/encryption engine isn't a good fit, even if it is hardware. -Steve