Walker: NAT means you are a consumer, not a peer

Thomas Shaddack shaddack at ns.arachne.cz
Sun Sep 21 13:28:29 PDT 2003


> (from /.) http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/eol/
> has a good rant by John Walker on how NAT turns
> users into consumers.

That's partially true, but the situation isn't that bad yet, and there are
countermeasures available for some cases. See eg.
http://www.pdos.lcs.mit.edu/~baford/nat/draft-ford-natp2p-00.txt

Walker's assesment is probably distorted by disproportional amount of
NAT-related questions on the support board.

Not too long ago, I incorporated binding to a defined UDP source IP:port
to my sfParanoidPatch <http://213.246.91.154/patches/speakfreely/> for
Linux version. This could alleviate some NAT-related problems, and let
Windows version developers to get inspired how to do it too.

What's sorely missing is some kind of easy diagnostics, a simple packet
sniffer showing the incoming/outgoing packets and a server that when asked
over TCP (eg, as a CGI script) would send back a short burst of
SpeakFreely-like UDP traffic, in order to detect if incoming traffic is
possible.

> Also Speak Freely maintenance is ending.

Not really. The project is moved to Sourceforge. The only thing ending is
Walker's involvement.

Now we can only hope that the project will be adopted by someone with
strong-enough organization and leadership skills.

> Sic transit unix to PC secure vox. Note that PGPfone devel ended a
> while ago, unsupporting PC to Mac secvox. Nautilus is AFAIK PC to PC
> only.

There is a need for secure cross-platform VoIP software. With a bit of
luck, SF won't die. There are already talks between the hopefully new
developers about architecture of new generation of SpeakFreely.

> John is also pessimistic about 1. IPv6 deployment and 2. the return of
> NAT'd broadband users to non-consumer (ie, potential server aka
> publisher) status.

If I remember correctly, IPv6 rollout is government-supported in eg.
Japan, and there are considerations over Europe. If the critical mass will
be reached, others will follow. Matter of time.

The consumer/publisher differentiation won't be as easy. Even "pure"
consumers have desire to run server-like applications; webcams, VoIP,
Interget gaming. If there still be some differentiation between ISPs and
content providers, there will be a reason - especially on saturated
markets - to cater to the wishes of groups like gamers. And once there are
methods for piercing holes in NAT for UDP, suitable for games, the same
methods are suitable for VoIP, so for SpeakFreely as well.

> As always, Walker is worth a read.

Without doubts.





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