Internet Architecture Board (IAB)                              D. Thaler
Request for Comments: 5902                                      L. Zhang
Category: Informational                                      G. Lebovitz
ISSN: 2070-1721                                                July 2010


           IAB Thoughts on IPv6 Network Address Translation

Abstract

  There has been much recent discussion on the topic of whether the
  IETF should develop standards for IPv6 Network Address Translators
  (NATs).  This document articulates the architectural issues raised by
  IPv6 NATs, the pros and cons of having IPv6 NATs, and provides the
  IAB's thoughts on the current open issues and the solution space.

Status of This Memo

  This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
  published for informational purposes.

  This document is a product of the Internet Architecture Board (IAB)
  and represents information that the IAB has deemed valuable to
  provide for permanent record.  Documents approved for publication by
  the IAB are not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see
  Section 2 of RFC 5741.

  Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
  and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
  http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5902.

Copyright Notice

  Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
  document authors.  All rights reserved.

  This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
  Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
  (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
  publication of this document.  Please review these documents
  carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
  to this document.









Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 1]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


Table of Contents

  1.  Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
  2.  What is the problem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
    2.1.  Avoiding Renumbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
    2.2.  Site Multihoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
    2.3.  Homogenous Edge Network Configurations . . . . . . . . . .  4
    2.4.  Network Obfuscation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
      2.4.1.  Hiding Hosts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
      2.4.2.  Topology Hiding  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
      2.4.3.  Summary Regarding NAT as a Tool for Network
              Obfuscation  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
    2.5.  Simple Security  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
    2.6.  Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
  3.  Architectural Considerations of IPv6 NAT . . . . . . . . . . .  9
  4.  Solution Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
    4.1.  Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
  5.  Security Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
  6.  IAB Members at the Time of Approval  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
  7.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.  Introduction

  In the past, the IAB has published a number of documents relating to
  Internet transparency and the end-to-end principle, and other IETF
  documents have also touched on these issues as well.  These documents
  articulate the general principles on which the Internet architecture
  is based, as well as the core values that the Internet community
  seeks to protect going forward.  Most recently, RFC 4924 [RFC4924]
  reaffirms these principles and provides a review of the various
  documents in this area.

  Facing imminent IPv4 address space exhaustion, recently there have
  been increased efforts in IPv6 deployment.  However, since late 2008
  there have also been increased discussions about whether the IETF
  should standardize network address translation within IPv6.  People
  who are against standardizing IPv6 NAT argue that there is no
  fundamental need for IPv6 NAT, and that as IPv6 continues to roll
  out, the Internet should converge towards reinstallation of the end-
  to-end reachability that has been a key factor in the Internet's
  success.  On the other hand, people who are for IPv6 NAT believe that
  NAT vendors would provide IPv6 NAT implementations anyway as NAT can
  be a solution to a number of problems, and that the IETF should avoid
  repeating the same mistake as with IPv4 NAT, where the lack of
  protocol standards led to different IPv4 NAT implementations, making
  NAT traversal difficult.





Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 2]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  An earlier effort, [RFC4864], provides a discussion of the real or
  perceived benefits of NAT and suggests alternatives for most of them,
  with the intent of showing that NAT is not required to get the
  desired benefits.  However, it also identifies several gaps remaining
  to be filled.

  This document provides the IAB's current thoughts on this debate.  We
  believe that the issue at hand must be viewed from an overall
  architectural standpoint in order to fully assess the pros and cons
  of IPv6 NAT on the global Internet and its future development.

2.  What is the problem?

  The discussions on the desire for IPv6 NAT can be summarized as
  follows.  Network address translation is viewed as a solution to
  achieve a number of desired properties for individual networks:
  avoiding renumbering, facilitating multihoming, making configurations
  homogenous, hiding internal network details, and providing simple
  security.

2.1.  Avoiding Renumbering

  As discussed in [RFC4864], Section 2.5, the ability to change service
  providers with minimal operational difficulty is an important
  requirement in many networks.  However, renumbering is still quite
  painful today, as discussed in [RFC5887].  Currently it requires
  reconfiguring devices that deal with IP addresses or prefixes,
  including DNS servers, DHCP servers, firewalls, IPsec policies, and
  potentially many other systems such as intrusion detection systems,
  inventory management systems, patch management systems, etc.

  In practice today, renumbering does not seem to be a significant
  problem in consumer networks, such as home networks, where addresses
  or prefixes are typically obtained through DHCP and are rarely
  manually configured in any component.  However, in managed networks,
  renumbering can be a serious problem.

  We also note that many, if not most, large enterprise networks avoid
  the renumbering problem by using provider-independent (PI) IP address
  blocks.  The use of PI addresses is inherent in today's Internet
  operations.  However, in smaller managed networks that cannot get
  provider-independent IP address blocks, renumbering remains a serious
  issue.  Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) constantly receive
  requests for PI address blocks; one main reason that they hesitate in
  assigning PI address blocks to all users is the concern about the PI
  addresses' impact on the routing system scalability.





Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 3]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


2.2.  Site Multihoming

  Another important requirement in many networks is site multihoming.
  A multihomed site essentially requires that its IP prefixes be
  present in the global routing table to achieve the desired
  reliability in its Internet connectivity as well as load balancing.
  In today's practice, multihomed sites with PI addresses announce
  their PI prefixes to the global routing system; multihomed sites with
  provider-allocated (PA) addresses also announce the PA prefix they
  obtained from one service provider to the global routing system
  through another service provider, effectively disabling provider-
  based prefix aggregation.  This practice makes the global routing
  table scale linearly with the number of multihomed user networks.

  This issue was identified in [RFC4864], Section 6.4.  Unfortunately,
  no solution except NAT has been deployed today that can insulate the
  global routing system from the growing number of multihomed sites,
  where a multihomed site simply assigns multiple IPv4 addresses (one
  from each of its service providers) to its exit router, which is an
  IPv4 NAT box.  Using address translation to facilitate multihoming
  support has one unique advantage: there is no impact on the routing
  system scalability, as the NAT box simply takes one address from each
  service provider, and the multihomed site does not inject its own
  routes into the system.  Intuitively, it also seems straightforward
  to roll the same solution into multihoming support in the IPv6
  deployment.  However, one should keep in mind that this approach
  brings all the drawbacks of putting a site behind a NAT box,
  including the loss of reachability to the servers behind the NAT box.

  It is also important to point out that a multihomed site announcing
  its own prefix(es) achieves two important benefits that NAT-based
  multihoming support does not provide.  First, end-to-end
  communications can be preserved in face of connectivity failures of
  individual service providers, as long as the site remains connected
  through at least one operational service provider.  Second,
  announcing one's prefixes also gives a multihomed site the ability to
  perform traffic engineering and load balancing.

2.3.  Homogenous Edge Network Configurations

  Service providers supporting residential customers need to minimize
  support costs (e.g., help desk calls).  Often a key factor in
  minimizing support costs is ensuring customers have homogenous
  configurations, including the addressing architecture.  Today, when
  IPv4 NATs are provided by a service provider, all customers get the
  same address space on their home networks, and hence the home gateway





Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 4]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  always has the same address.  From a customer-support perspective,
  this perhaps represents the most important property of NAT usage
  today.

  In IPv6, link-local addresses can be used to ensure that all home
  gateways have the same address, and to provide homogenous addresses
  to any other devices supported by the service provider.  Unlike IPv4,
  having a globally unique address does not prevent the use of a
  homogenous address within the subnet.  It is only in the case of
  multi-subnet customers that IPv6 NAT would provide some homogeneity
  that wouldn't be provided by link-local addresses.  For multi-subnet
  customers (e.g., a customer using a wireless access point behind the
  service provider router/modem), service providers today might only
  discuss problems (for IPv4 or IPv6) from computers connected directly
  to the service provider router.

  It is currently unknown whether IPv6 link-local addresses provide
  sufficient homogeneity to minimize help desk calls.  If they do not,
  providers might still desire IPv6 NATs in the residential gateways
  they provide.

2.4.  Network Obfuscation

  Most network administrators want to hide the details of the computing
  resources, information infrastructure, and communications networks
  within their borders.  This desire is rooted in the basic security
  principle that an organization's assets are for its sole use and all
  information about those assets, their operation, and the methods and
  tactics of their use are proprietary secrets.  Some organizations use
  their information and communication technologies as a competitive
  advantage in their industries.  It is a generally held belief that
  measures must be taken to protect those secrets.  The first layer of
  protection of those secrets is preventing access to the secrets or
  knowledge about the secrets whenever possible.  It is understandable
  why network administrators would want to keep the details about the
  hosts on their network, as well as the network infrastructure itself,
  private.  They believe that NAT helps achieve this goal.

2.4.1.  Hiding Hosts

  As a specific measure of network obfuscation, network administrators
  wish to keep secret any and all information about the computer
  systems residing within their network boundaries.  Such computer
  systems include workstations, laptops, servers, function-specific
  end-points (e.g., printers, scanners, IP telephones, point-of-sale
  machines, building door access-control devices), and such.  They want
  to prevent an external entity from counting the number of hosts on
  the network.  They also want to prevent host fingerprinting, i.e.,



Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 5]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  gaining information about the constitution, contents, or function of
  a host.  For example, they want to hide the role of a host, as
  whether it is a user workstation, a finance server, a source code
  build server, or a printer.  A second element of host-fingerprinting
  prevention is to hide details that could aid an attacker in
  compromising the host.  Such details might include the type of
  operating system, its version number, any patches it may or may not
  have, the make and model of the device hardware, any application
  software packages loaded, those version numbers and patches, and so
  on.  With such information about hosts, an attacker can launch a more
  focused, targeted attack.  Operators want to stop both host counting
  and host fingerprinting.

  Where host counting is a concern, it is worth pointing out some of
  the challenges in preventing it.  [Bellovin] showed how one can
  successfully count the number of hosts behind a certain type of
  simple NAT box.  More complex NAT deployments, e.g., ones employing
  Network Address Port Translators (NAPTs) with a pool of public
  addresses that are randomly bound to internal hosts dynamically upon
  receipt of any new connection, and do so without persistency across
  connections from the same host are more successful in preventing host
  counting.  However, the more complex the NAT deployment, the less
  likely that complex connection types like the Session Initiation
  Protocol (SIP) [RFC3261] and the Stream Control Transmission Protocol
  (SCTP) [RFC4960] will be able to successfully traverse the NAT.  This
  observation follows the age-old axiom for networked computer systems:
  for every unit of security you gain, you give up a unit of
  convenience, and for every unit of convenience you hope to gain, you
  must give up a unit of security.

  If fields such as fragment ID, TCP initial sequence number, or
  ephemeral port number are chosen in a predictable fashion (e.g.,
  sequentially), then an attacker may correlate packets or connections
  coming from the same host.

  To prevent counting hosts by counting addresses, one might be tempted
  to use a separate IP address for each transport-layer connection.
  Such an approach introduces other architectural problems, however.
  Within the host's subnet, various devices including switches,
  routers, and even the host's own hardware interface often have a
  limited amount of state available before causing communication that
  uses a large number of addresses to suffer significant performance
  problems.  In addition, if an attacker can somehow determine an
  average number of connections per host, the attacker can still
  estimate the number of hosts based on the number of connections
  observed.  Hence, such an approach can adversely affect legitimate
  communication at all times, simply to raise the bar for an attacker.




Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 6]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  Where host fingerprinting is concerned, even a complex NAT cannot
  prevent fingerprinting completely.  The way that different hosts
  respond to different requests and sequences of events will indicate
  consistently the type of a host that it is, its OS, version number,
  and sometimes applications installed, etc.  Products exist that do
  this for network administrators as a service, as part of a
  vulnerability assessment.

  These scanning tools initiate connections of various types across a
  range of possible IP addresses reachable through that network.  They
  observe what returns, and then send follow-up messages accordingly
  until they "fingerprint" the host thoroughly.  When run as part of a
  network assessment process, these tools are normally run from the
  inside of the network, behind the NAT.  If such a tool is set outside
  a network boundary (as part of an external vulnerability assessment
  or penetration test) along the path of packets, and is passively
  observing and recording connection exchanges, over time it can
  fingerprint hosts only if it has a means of determining which
  externally viewed connections are originating from the same internal
  host.  If the NATing is simple and static, and each host's internal
  address is always mapped to the same external address and vice versa,
  the tool has 100% success fingerprinting the host.  With the internal
  hosts mapped to their external IP addresses and fingerprinted, the
  attacker can launch targeted attacks into those hosts, or reliably
  attempt to hijack those hosts' connections.  If the NAT uses a single
  external IP, or a pool of dynamically assigned IP addresses for each
  host, but does so in a deterministic and predictable way, then the
  operation of fingerprinting is more complex, but quite achievable.

  If the NAT uses dynamically assigned addresses, with short-term
  persistency, but no externally learnable determinism, then the
  problem gets harder for the attacker.  The observer may be able to
  fingerprint a host during the lifetime of a particular IP address
  mapping, and across connections, but once that IP mapping is
  terminated, the observer doesn't immediately know which new mapping
  will be that same host.  After much observation and correlation, the
  attacker could sometimes determine if an observed new connection in
  flight is from a familiar host.  With that information, and a good
  set of man-in-the-middle attack tools, the attacker could attempt to
  compromise the host by hijacking a new connection of adequately long
  duration.  If temporal persistency is not deployed on the NAT, then
  this tactic becomes almost impossible.  As the difficulty and cost of
  the attack increases, the number of attackers attempting to employ it
  decreases.  And certainly the attacker would not be able to initiate
  a connection toward a host for which the attacker does not know the
  current IP address binding.  So, the attacker is limited to hijacking
  observed connections thought to be from a familiar host, or to
  blindly initiating attacks on connections in flight.  This is why



Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 7]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  network administrators appreciate complex NATs' ability to deter host
  counting and fingerprinting, but such deterrence comes at a cost of
  host reachability.

2.4.2.  Topology Hiding

  It is perceived that a network operator may want to hide the details
  of the network topology, the size of the network, the identities of
  the internal routers, and the interconnection among the routers.
  This desire has been discussed in [RFC4864], Sections 4.4 and 6.2.

  However, the success of topology hiding is dependent upon the
  complexity, dynamism, and pervasiveness of bindings the NAT employs
  (all of which were described above).  The more complex, the more the
  topology will be hidden, but the less likely that complex connection
  types will successfully traverse the NAT barrier.  Thus, the trade-
  off is reachability across applications.

  Even if one can hide the actual addresses of internal hosts through
  address translation, this does not necessarily prove sufficient to
  hide internal topology.  It may be possible to infer some aspects of
  topological information from passively observing packets.  For
  example, based on packet timing, delay measurements, the Hop Limit
  field, or other fields in the packet header, one could infer the
  relative distance between multiple hosts.  Once an observed session
  is believed to match a previously fingerprinted host, that host's
  distance from the NAT device may be learned, but not its exact
  location or particular internal subnet.

  Host fingerprinting is required in order to do a thorough distance
  mapping.  An attacker might then use message contents to lump certain
  types of devices into logical clusters, and take educated guesses at
  attacks.  This is not, however, a thorough mapping.  Some NATs change
  the TTL hop counts, much like an application-layer proxy would, while
  others don't; this is an administrative setting on more advanced
  NATs.  The simpler and more static the NAT, the more possible this
  is.  The more complex and dynamic and non-persistent the NAT
  bindings, the more difficult.

2.4.3.  Summary Regarding NAT as a Tool for Network Obfuscation

  The degree of obfuscation a NAT can achieve will be a function of its
  complexity as measured by:

  o  The use of one-to-many NAPT mappings;






Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 8]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  o  The randomness over time of the mappings from internal to external
     IP addresses, i.e., non-deterministic mappings from an outsider's
     perspective;

  o  The lack of persistence of mappings, i.e., the shortness of
     mapping lifetimes and not using the same mapping repeatedly;

  o  The use of re-writing in IP header fields such as TTL.

  However, deployers be warned: as obfuscation increases, host
  reachability decreases.  Mechanisms such as STUN [RFC5389] and Teredo
  [RFC4380] fail with the more complex NAT mechanisms.

2.5.  Simple Security

  It is commonly perceived that a NAT box provides one level of
  protection because external hosts cannot directly initiate
  communication with hosts behind a NAT.  However, one should not
  confuse NAT boxes with firewalls.  As discussed in [RFC4864], Section
  2.2, the act of translation does not provide security in itself.  The
  stateful filtering function can provide the same level of protection
  without requiring a translation function.  For further discussion,
  see [RFC4864], Section 4.2.

2.6.  Discussion

  At present, the primary benefits one may receive from deploying NAT
  appear to be avoiding renumbering, facilitating multihoming without
  impacting routing scalability, and making edge consumer network
  configurations homogenous.

  Network obfuscation (host hiding, both counting and fingerprinting
  prevention, and topology hiding) may well be achieved with more
  complex NATs, but at the cost of losing some reachability and
  application success.  Again, when it comes to security, this is often
  the case: to gain security one must give up some measure of
  convenience.

3.  Architectural Considerations of IPv6 NAT

  First, it is important to distinguish between the effects of a NAT
  box vs. the effects of a firewall.  A firewall is intended to prevent
  unwanted traffic [RFC4948] without impacting wanted traffic, whereas
  a NAT box also interferes with wanted traffic.  In the remainder of
  this section, the term "reachability" is used with respect to wanted
  traffic.





Thaler, et al.                Informational                     [Page 9]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  The discussions on IPv6 NAT often refer to the wide deployment of
  IPv4 NAT, where people have both identified tangible benefits and
  gained operational experience.  However, the discussions so far seem
  mostly focused on the potential benefits that IPv6 NAT may, or may
  not, bring.  Little attention has been paid to the bigger picture, as
  we elaborate below.

  When considering the benefits that IPv6 NAT may bring to a site that
  deploys it, we must not overlook a bigger question: if one site
  deploys IPv6 NAT, what is the potential impact it brings to the rest
  of the Internet that does not do IPv6 NAT?  By "the rest of the
  Internet", we mean the Internet community that develops, deploys, and
  uses end-to-end applications and protocols and hence is affected by
  any loss of transparency (see [RFC2993] and [RFC4924] for further
  discussion).  This important question does not seem to have been
  addressed, or addressed adequately.

  We believe that the discussions on IPv6 NAT should be put in the
  context of the overall Internet architecture.  The foremost question
  is not how many benefits one may derive from using IPv6 NAT, but more
  fundamentally, whether a significant portion of parties on the
  Internet are willing to deploy IPv6 NAT, and hence whether we want to
  make IP address translation a permanent building block in the
  Internet architecture.

  One may argue that the answers to the above questions depend on
  whether we can find adequate solutions to the renumbering, site
  multihoming, and edge network configuration problems, and whether the
  solutions provide transparency or not.  If transparency is not
  provided, making NAT a permanent building block in the Internet would
  represent a fundamental architectural change.

  It is desirable that IPv6 users and applications be able to reach
  each other directly without having to worry about address translation
  boxes between the two ends.  IPv6 application developers in general
  should be able to program based on the assumption of end-to-end
  reachability (of wanted traffic), without having to address the issue
  of traversing NAT boxes.  For example, referrals and multi-party
  conversations are straightforward with end-to-end addressing, but
  vastly complicated in the presence of address translation.
  Similarly, network administrators should be able to run their
  networks without the added complexity of NATs, which can bring not
  only the cost of additional boxes, but also increased difficulties in
  network monitoring and problem debugging.







Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 10]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  Given the diversity of the Internet user populations and the
  diversity in today's operational practice, it is conceivable that
  some parties may have a strong desire to deploy IPv6 NAT, and the
  Internet should accommodate different views that lead to different
  practices (i.e., some using IPv6 NAT, others not).

  If we accept the view that some, but not all, parties want IPv6 NAT,
  then the real debate should not be on what benefits IPv6 NAT may
  bring to the parties who deploy it.  It is undeniable that network
  address translation can bring certain benefits to its users.
  However, the real challenge we should address is how to design IPv6
  NAT in such a way that it can hide its impact within some localized
  scope.  If IPv6 NAT design can achieve this goal, then the Internet
  as a whole can strive for (reinstalling) the end-to-end reachability
  model.

4.  Solution Space

  From an end-to-end perspective, the solution space for renumbering
  and multihoming can be broadly divided into three classes:


  1.  Endpoints get a stable, globally reachable address: In this class
      of solutions, end sites use provider-independent addressing and
      hence endpoints are unaffected by changing service providers.
      For this to be a complete solution, provider-independent
      addressing must be available to all managed networks (i.e., all
      networks that use manual configuration of addresses or prefixes
      in any type of system).  However, in today's practice, assigning
      provider-independent addresses to all networks, including small
      ones, raises concerns with the scalability of the global routing
      system.  This is an area of ongoing research and experimentation.
      In practice, network administrators have also been developing
      short-term approaches to resolve today's gap between the
      continued routing table growth and limitations in existing router
      capacity [NANOG].

  2.  Endpoints get a stable but non-globally-routable address on
      physical interfaces but a dynamic, globally routable address
      inside a tunnel: In this class of solutions, hosts use locally-
      scoped (and hence provider-independent) addresses for
      communication within the site using their physical interfaces.
      As a result, managed systems such as routers, DHCP servers, etc.,
      all see stable addresses.  Tunneling from the host to some
      infrastructure device is then used to communicate externally.
      Tunneling provides the host with globally routable addresses that
      may change, but address changes are constrained to systems that
      operate over or beyond the tunnel, including DNS servers and



Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 11]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


      applications.  These systems, however, are the ones that often
      can already deal with changes today using mechanisms such as DNS
      dynamic update.  However, if endpoints and the tunnel
      infrastructure devices are owned by different organizations, then
      solutions are harder to incrementally deploy due to the incentive
      and coordination issues involved.

  3.  Endpoints get a stable address that gets translated in the
      network: In this class of solutions, end sites use non-globally-
      routable addresses within the site, and translate them to
      globally routable addresses somewhere in the network.  In
      general, this causes the loss of end-to-end transparency, which
      is the subject of [RFC4924] and the documents it surveys.  If the
      translation is reversible, and the translation is indeed reversed
      by the time it reaches the other end of communication, then end-
      to-end transparency can be provided.  However, if the two
      translators involved are owned by different organizations, then
      solutions are harder to incrementally deploy due to the incentive
      and coordination issues involved.

  Concerning routing scalability, although there is no immediate
  danger, routing scalability has been a longtime concern in
  operational communities, and an effective and deployable solution
  must be found.  We observe that the question at hand is not about
  whether some parties can run NAT, but rather, whether the Internet as
  a whole would be willing to rely on NAT to curtail the routing
  scalability problem, and whether we have investigated all the
  potential impacts of doing so to understand its cost on the overall
  architecture.  If effective solutions can be deployed in time to
  allow assigning provider-independent IPv6 addresses to all user
  communities, the Internet can avoid the complexity and fragility and
  other unforeseen problems introduced by NAT.

4.1.  Discussion

  As [RFC4924] states:

     A network that does not filter or transform the data that it
     carries may be said to be "transparent" or "oblivious" to the
     content of packets.  Networks that provide oblivious transport
     enable the deployment of new services without requiring changes to
     the core.  It is this flexibility that is perhaps both the
     Internet's most essential characteristic as well as one of the
     most important contributors to its success.

  We believe that providing end-to-end transparency, as defined above,
  is key to the success of the Internet.  While some fields of traffic
  (e.g., Hop Limit) are defined to be mutable, transparency requires



Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 12]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


  that fields not defined as such arrive un-transformed.  Currently,
  the source and destination addresses are defined as immutable fields,
  and are used as such by many protocols and applications.

  Each of the three classes of solution can be defined in a way that
  preserves end-to-end transparency.

  While we do not consider IPv6 NATs to be desirable, we understand
  that some deployment of them is likely unless workable solutions to
  avoiding renumbering, facilitating multihoming without adversely
  impacting routing scalability, and homogeneity are generally
  recognized as useful and appropriate.

  As such, we strongly encourage the community to consider end-to-end
  transparency as a requirement when proposing any solution, whether it
  be based on tunneling or translation or some other technique.
  Solutions can then be compared based on other aspects such as
  scalability and ease of deployment.

5.  Security Considerations

  Section 2 discusses potential privacy concerns as part of the Host
  Counting and Topology Hiding problems.

6.  IAB Members at the Time of Approval

  Marcelo Bagnulo
  Gonzalo Camarillo
  Stuart Cheshire
  Vijay Gill
  Russ Housley
  John Klensin
  Olaf Kolkman
  Gregory Lebovitz
  Andrew Malis
  Danny McPherson
  David Oran
  Jon Peterson
  Dave Thaler












Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 13]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


7.  Informative References

  [Bellovin]  Bellovin, S., "A Technique for Counting NATted Hosts",
              Proc. Second Internet Measurement Workshop,
              November 2002,
              <http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/papers/fnat.pdf>.

  [NANOG]     "Extending the Life of Layer 3 Switches in a 256k+ Route
              World", NANOG 44, October 2008, <http://www.nanog.org/
              meetings/nanog44/presentations/Monday/
              Roisman_lightning.pdf>.

  [RFC2993]   Hain, T., "Architectural Implications of NAT", RFC 2993,
              November 2000.

  [RFC3261]   Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
              A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
              Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
              June 2002.

  [RFC4380]   Huitema, C., "Teredo: Tunneling IPv6 over UDP through
              Network Address Translations (NATs)", RFC 4380,
              February 2006.

  [RFC4864]   Van de Velde, G., Hain, T., Droms, R., Carpenter, B., and
              E. Klein, "Local Network Protection for IPv6", RFC 4864,
              May 2007.

  [RFC4924]   Aboba, B. and E. Davies, "Reflections on Internet
              Transparency", RFC 4924, July 2007.

  [RFC4948]   Andersson, L., Davies, E., and L. Zhang, "Report from the
              IAB workshop on Unwanted Traffic March 9-10, 2006",
              RFC 4948, August 2007.

  [RFC4960]   Stewart, R., "Stream Control Transmission Protocol",
              RFC 4960, September 2007.

  [RFC5389]   Rosenberg, J., Mahy, R., Matthews, P., and D. Wing,
              "Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)", RFC 5389,
              October 2008.

  [RFC5887]   Carpenter, B., Atkinson, R., and H. Flinck, "Renumbering
              Still Needs Work", RFC 5887, May 2010.







Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 14]

RFC 5902                 IPv6 NAT Considerations               July 2010


Authors' Addresses

  Dave Thaler
  Microsoft Corporation
  One Microsoft Way
  Redmond, WA  98052
  USA

  Phone: +1 425 703 8835
  EMail: [email protected]


  Lixia Zhang
  UCLA Computer Science Department
  3713 Boelter Hall
  Los Angeles, CA  90095
  USA

  Phone: +1 310 825 2695
  EMail: [email protected]


  Gregory Lebovitz
  Juniper Networks, Inc.
  1194 North Mathilda Ave.
  Sunnyvale, CA  94089
  USA

  EMail: [email protected]


  Internet Architecture Board

  EMail: [email protected]

















Thaler, et al.                Informational                    [Page 15]