CGN :: Observations & Recommendations

The 2012 North American IPv6 Summit has come and gone but requests for my slides from the third day continue to roll in. So I’ve decided, as I often do, to post them up here. My talk “Carrier Grade NAT – Observations and Recommendations” was given as part of the “IPv6 Transition and IPv6 in the Home” Track on day 3 of the Summit. In it, I cover as much of our work here at CableLabs around CGN/LSN that I could squeeze into 45 minutes. I start with a brief overview of what NAT and CGN/LSN are and how they work. Then I report on the testing that CableLabs has conducted on CGN/LSN over the past two plus years, and on the challenges we’ve discovered. Next I cover many of the workarounds, mitigations and potential solutions to those challenges, including some novel ideas invented at CableLabs. I wrapped up my talk with some conclusions and parting recommendations. Enough of me yammering though – the slides should give you a decent understanding of what I presented:

A few things before I let you go:

First, slides 7 and 8 rely heavily on animation to describe the workings of a NAT444 and a DS-Lite deployment respectively. To make that a little clearer without the animations, here are the two graphics rebuilt for static viewing:

Second, if you’d like the rest of the story on CGN (all the details not in the slides), give me a shout – perhaps I can come give this talk at your event as well. This of course goes for any of the talks you may have seen me give and slides I may have posted.

Finally, as always, your comments, questions, suggestions, and other feedback is very welcome. Did I get something wrong? Miss something? Bore you? Blow your mind? Let me know!