Idk man, NAT makes a lot of sense once you get used to it. And it’s pretty cozy with its firewall features. And somewhat human readable ipv4 addresses are nice.
They charge extra for a feature called “static IP”. But the IP address not being static is not the issue, for me at least. You could host stuff with a dynamic IP back in 2000s/2010s. But no, now you get to share the same IPv4 address with a bunch of other households, unless you pay extra.
Ha, yeah that sucks and I’d absolutely hate it if I were behind a CGNAT. But I believe most ISPs don’t do that. None of mine ever have. Just like how most ISPs provide you with an ipv6 address range, but not all. Fact is that crappy ISPs can screw up your network no matter what ip spec you’re using.
And I’ve never heard of a business network being behind an ISP controlled CGNAT. A NAT you control can be nice.
The “firewall” features are called connection tracking and, a firewall. With IPv6 I have my firewall setup very similar to NAT. Established and outgoing new connections are allowed (this is done using connection tracking). Incoming new connections are not allowed unless I open up a specific port.
Home firewalls SHOULD be setup the same for IPv6, a lot are not and IMO is the main problem right now.
I like that none of my local devices are externally addressable unless an outgoing connection has been established. You can (and should) achieve the same thing with ipv6, but then it’s essentially just maintaining a NAT table without the translation piece. I think that makes sense in both protocols.
With IPv6 for most use cases there’s actually more security. With privacy extensions (pretty sure it’s enabled on windows by default), when you make connections from your device, it uses a “private” IP. That is a randomly chosen address inside your network’s prefix, that changes regularly.
These addresses don’t accept incoming connections. You have a main address that doesn’t really change that you accept connections on. Firewall that for ports you want to allow and then hackers need to port scan 2^64 or 2^80 address space to find your real IPs in your prefix. If they capture your IP from a connection to a web server etc, they won’t have luck scanning you.
Again as per my post above, the biggest risk right now is bad default configurations on many home routers.
I like that none of my local devices are externally addressable unless an outgoing connection has been established.
This can also be achieved using (other) firewall rules.
but then it’s essentially just maintaining a NAT table without the translation piece.
So… a firewall?
NAT isn’t a security feature and shouldn’t be relied on for managing access to hosts.
It also breaks the assumption of IP that connections between hosts are end-to-end, which requires sophisticated solutions so that everything works (more or less).
I too employ NAT to make services accessible over IPv4. But only because it doesn’t work otherwise. Not because it “makes sense”. I don’t use it at all for IPv6.
Does IPv6 scare you so much that you start craving the monstrosity known as NAT44?
Idk man, NAT makes a lot of sense once you get used to it. And it’s pretty cozy with its firewall features. And somewhat human readable ipv4 addresses are nice.
NAT provides no firewall features and we can have a discussion about how wrong that statement is
ISPs putting you behind NAT is not cozy.
They charge extra for a feature called “static IP”. But the IP address not being static is not the issue, for me at least. You could host stuff with a dynamic IP back in 2000s/2010s. But no, now you get to share the same IPv4 address with a bunch of other households, unless you pay extra.
Ha, yeah that sucks and I’d absolutely hate it if I were behind a CGNAT. But I believe most ISPs don’t do that. None of mine ever have. Just like how most ISPs provide you with an ipv6 address range, but not all. Fact is that crappy ISPs can screw up your network no matter what ip spec you’re using.
And I’ve never heard of a business network being behind an ISP controlled CGNAT. A NAT you control can be nice.
The “firewall” features are called connection tracking and, a firewall. With IPv6 I have my firewall setup very similar to NAT. Established and outgoing new connections are allowed (this is done using connection tracking). Incoming new connections are not allowed unless I open up a specific port.
Home firewalls SHOULD be setup the same for IPv6, a lot are not and IMO is the main problem right now.
That’s a lie, NAT is bullshit, sometimes necessary, but it will never “make sense”.
I like that none of my local devices are externally addressable unless an outgoing connection has been established. You can (and should) achieve the same thing with ipv6, but then it’s essentially just maintaining a NAT table without the translation piece. I think that makes sense in both protocols.
exactly, I also like this peace of mind for my home network and see no benefit in using ipv6 there. Similarly for any VPC I deploy to an IaaS.
With IPv6 for most use cases there’s actually more security. With privacy extensions (pretty sure it’s enabled on windows by default), when you make connections from your device, it uses a “private” IP. That is a randomly chosen address inside your network’s prefix, that changes regularly.
These addresses don’t accept incoming connections. You have a main address that doesn’t really change that you accept connections on. Firewall that for ports you want to allow and then hackers need to port scan 2^64 or 2^80 address space to find your real IPs in your prefix. If they capture your IP from a connection to a web server etc, they won’t have luck scanning you.
Again as per my post above, the biggest risk right now is bad default configurations on many home routers.
This can also be achieved using (other) firewall rules.
So… a firewall?
NAT isn’t a security feature and shouldn’t be relied on for managing access to hosts.
It also breaks the assumption of IP that connections between hosts are end-to-end, which requires sophisticated solutions so that everything works (more or less).
I too employ NAT to make services accessible over IPv4. But only because it doesn’t work otherwise. Not because it “makes sense”. I don’t use it at all for IPv6.