An Opinion in Defence of NATs
FTA:
&quot;More address bits? Well perhaps not all that much. The space created by NATs operates from within a 96-bit vector of address and port components, and the usable space may well approach the equivalent of a 50-bit conventional address architecture. On the other hand, the IPv6 address architecture has stripped off some 64 bits for an interface identifier and conventionally uses a further 16 bits as a site identifier. The resulting space is of the order of 52 bits. It’s not clear that the two pools of address tokens are all that much different in size.&quot;<p>Well, if you want to ignore the fact that IPv6 can utilize the same port combinations as IPv4, then your math works. If you actually compare apples to apples though, it&#x27;s fundamentally flawed.<p>That said, I happen to be a fan of NAT - just not for the reasons outlined here.