Bob left a prolonged remark arguing with the (considerably black-and-white) claims I made within the Rise of NAT podcast. Let’s begin with the any-to-any connectivity:
From my younger millennial viewpoint, the logic is reversed: it’s due to NATs and firewalls that the web turned so asymmetrical (shopper/server) similar to the Minitel was designed (sure, I’m French), whereas the Web (and later the online, though a shopper/server protocol, was meant for everybody to be a shopper and a server) was designed to be extra balanced.
Let’s begin with the early Web. It had no peer-to-peer purposes. It related just a few giant computer systems (mainframes) that might act as servers but additionally allowed terminal-based consumer entry and thus ran per-user purchasers.
The shopper/server dichotomy turned extra evident as we began connecting low-end machines (IBM PCs and the like) to IP networks. The low-end machines didn’t have sufficient sources to be (moderately good) servers, and as soon as you would run Web purposes in your private laptop and drag an e mail right into a trash bin, terminal entry shortly appeared bizarrely outmoded. Despite the fact that each machine was an IP host, the cut up into primarily purchasers and largely servers IP hosts occurred with none strain from the community aspect.
In fact, we all the time had individuals working web- and SMTP servers of their basements, however they have been all the time a tiny (however very vocal) minority.
It’s additionally value mentioning that every one networking applied sciences (other than IBM SNA) out there within the early Nineteen Nineties used a single handle house and offered any-to-any end-to-end connectivity. IP wasn’t both distinctive or higher than the others; it simply occurred to have a large enough handle house and a worldwide handle allocation mechanism. The sacred cow of any-to-any connectivity was created primarily as an argument for the just about infinite benefit of IPv6 after we had no different possibility however to start out utilizing NAT.
On the similar time, we had giant country-wide DECnet networks, however their 16-bit handle house inherently restricted their most measurement. There have been additionally makes an attempt to have a worldwide registry of Novell IPX networks, however they by no means obtained far.
It’s additionally value noting that the majority residential prospects didn’t care in any respect about these technical particulars (so long as they may learn emails and browse the online), and huge organizations considered NAT as a welcome demarcation level between inside and public networks. The one individuals preaching the advantages of limitless, any-to-any connectivity have been the IPv6 True Believers.
The rise of NAT was thus not an evil conspiracy by Large Tech or the trigger for the client-server asymmetry. It was a practical consequence of the truth that most paying prospects accessed Web providers from purchasers that weren’t additionally servers whereas IETF was dragging its ft, affected by the not invented right here syndrome, and throwing all kinds of loopy concepts into the kitchen sink referred to as IPv6 as a substitute of reusing an already-deployed protocol as the idea for the next-generation Web.
