IPv6 Success Stories: Necessary Evils

At the ARIN 51 Public Policy and Members Meeting in April 2023, a panel of five community members who have contributed to the IPv6 case studies on our blog or have other IPv6 deployment experience joined us for a compelling and informative discussion moderated by ARIN President and CEO John Curran. In this IPv6 Success Stories series we’re highlighting the experiences, insights, lessons learned, and tips for successful IPv6 deployment shared by those panelists.

In the panel’s Q&A session, ARIN President and CEO John Curran asked the panelists questions to elicit more details about their deployment experiences for other organizations to consider when it comes to IPv6.

What role did carrier-grade NAT (CGN or CGNAT) play in your IPv6 deployment, and what are your thoughts on that technology?

Ben Bittfield, an IPv6 contractor, labeled CGNAT a necessary evil, saying that it got the job done and worked well, but it was expensive, created performance issues, and wasn’t what they wanted as their target.

Madhura Kale, Principal Product Manager Network & Compute at AWS, doesn’t have any experience with carrier-grade NAT, but she noted that customers can use private NAT on AWS and that the opinions she hears on it vary depending on people’s organizational roles. Infrastructure network administrators don’t like it because it makes their jobs harder and more expensive, but people who own applications and services don’t care as long as it works.

Brent Mc Intosh, CTO of MCNET-SOLUTIONS, echoing Ben’s “necessary evil” description, made it very clear that he has plenty of experience with CGNAT, but, as a longtime IPv6 evangelist, is not a fan. “We need to move to IPv6,” he said. “That’s all I’ll say about that.”

Brian Jones, Assistant Director of Operations at Virginia Tech, simply summarized that it is expensive, adds a lot of overhead, and makes troubleshooting harder.

Matthew Wilder, Senior Engineer at TELUS Communications, shared the perspective that CGNAT is there for a reason, serving the purpose of providing an IPv4 option that doesn’t require the purchase of public IPv4 addresses.

Learn more about IPv6 at arin.net/IPv6, and let us know about your own experiences, tips, tricks, and other thoughts on IPv6 deployment by commenting on this article or sending us a message.