[sunshinekitty]

This is my take as well, we would not have any ip space if every machine had a public ipv4 address - this is kind of a silly argument to make, nat’s provide a ton of usefulness.

As a kid I didn’t get it either but would port forward, run a vpn server, reverse proxy, and so on. It was a good learning experience trying to get my friends to install vpn clients!

[tenebrisalietum]

> nat’s provide a ton of usefulness

... to companies like IPXO that are trying to acquire, rent, and treat IPv4 addresses like speculative real estate.

[ndriscoll]

> we would not have any ip space if every machine had a public ipv4 address

Right, but then ISPs and hosting providers would have to have supported ipv6 10 years ago (or even earlier) when we ran out. Customers were already demanding multiple devices on their wifi 20 years ago, and without NAT, ipv6 would have been necessary.

With NAT, you can't do p2p or self hosting. Without it, you couldn't use centralized services either.

[BenjiWiebe]

NAT's usefulness is that it helps with IP address shortage. If there wasn't a shortage, NAT wouldn't be useful anymore.

And for those that say "but security!", firewalls are a thing, and need be no more complicated than NAT.