Now I'm a few hours behind this thread, so hopefully I won't get timelined :). On 18/02/2007, at 4:57 PM, Mark Foster wrote:
Infact, if I was an ISP I would be seriously considering NATing my entire customer base - except for those who were willing to pay $x/mo for a real IP. At the end of the day, with a few exceptions, most protocols work quite well from behind a nat.
Your helpdesk will need to cater for the fact that the average level of IT-Cloo of your customers is likely to be lower; and the overhead of having to explain why xyz application doesn't work properly without more money being thrown at their internet account...
And to bring this back to IPv6 deployment - what about the poor helpdesk staffers then? Whatever the outcome - IPv6, NAT, ???, there's going to be new costs incurred.
And it gives me another revenue stream, which if I am an ISP would be quite useful considering I am probably losing money on the DSL I am currently providing.
It wouldn't suprise me if customers took the opportunity to consider another ISP; I know many that do so when looking to make significant plan changes...
At the moment the large majority of NZ internet users are not like us though. They just by things of trademe, POP their mail and a few others. The average user profile needs to be taken into consideration when weighing up addressing options, and the time at which to deploy them.
To implement this sort of thing seems like a gamble that is, at this stage at the game, no better than revenue-neutral.
All the options look like a gamble to me at the moment :).
Maybe when IP address space is a more scare commodity, it'll look like a better option....?
It's certainly going to bring things to a head. Cheers, Jonny.