Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on January 28, 2004 05:23 AM
Consumers use NAT because the available devices that allow them to connect more than one computer to their internet connection use NAT.
These devices exist because ISPs generally don't like to provide more than one IP address. There are a couple of reasons that ISPs don't like to freely provide IP addresses:
Blocks of IP addresses have historically been very expensive for ISPs to purchase. This is related to the limitations in IPv4. Since there are a finite amount of IPv4 addresses, and since they were sold in large chunks (usually Class B or C), backbone providers started really raising the prices when the demand for IP addresses grew (this was in the mid- to late-90's).
Plus, back in the day, you typically either had a static IP address for your networked computer or a dynamic IP address assigned to your dialup computer (this was before broadband). DHCP - and the efficient use of an IP addresses pool that it gives - was not available to most people.
Additionally, as has been mentioned already, ISPs try to minimize "business" use of plain internet access accounts, and restricting access for multiple machines is one way to do that.
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A couple of reasons that NAT has flourished
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on January 28, 2004 05:23 AMThese devices exist because ISPs generally don't like to provide more than one IP address. There are a couple of reasons that ISPs don't like to freely provide IP addresses:
Blocks of IP addresses have historically been very expensive for ISPs to purchase. This is related to the limitations in IPv4. Since there are a finite amount of IPv4 addresses, and since they were sold in large chunks (usually Class B or C), backbone providers started really raising the prices when the demand for IP addresses grew (this was in the mid- to late-90's).
Plus, back in the day, you typically either had a static IP address for your networked computer or a dynamic IP address assigned to your dialup computer (this was before broadband). DHCP - and the efficient use of an IP addresses pool that it gives - was not available to most people.
Additionally, as has been mentioned already, ISPs try to minimize "business" use of plain internet access accounts, and restricting access for multiple machines is one way to do that.
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