>Even despite this rats maze of proxies and NAT gateways we're still supporting virtually all the applications that consumers use
That's a tautology: "Despite the limitations of IPv4, we're still supporting all the applications that can work within the limitations of IPv4".
Lots of potential P2P applications (that might solve a lot of problems with have with the current centralised model of the internet) either don't make it past the drawing board because of NAT, or have to be encumbered with complex, expensive-to-develop, best-effort NAT-punching behaviour that burdens everyone involved (and can stop an application from being truly P2P by having to run things like STUN servers).
>NAT seems to always get a bad rep because it inconveniences the very few that want to have an end to end experience
I think there would be many more that wanted this if it were trivially easy to do
>but there has to be some sacrifice to keep the Internet running for the billions of users.
> I think there would be many more that wanted this if it were trivially easy to do
I've seen figures from proponents of Future Internet Architectures such as Named Data Networking claim that consumption is about 80% of Internet traffic. The truth is not everyone needs a Internet addressable host, mobile phones for example don't. And well, we're living in this situation today with CGNAT and you don't hear complaints from customers about not having Internet addressable IPs.
> What's the sacrifice in using IPv6?
Support. Enabling IPv6 on broadband consumer networks, small medium businesses, etc. means that you have to support the various devices v6 stacks and applications and ensure they continue to work just as well as they did with IPv4. IPv6 can still cause damage and the ability to support and fix these issues throw out virtually all incumbent knowledge.
If it were really just a "flip of a switch", everyone would've done it by now.
In some countries almost everybody already did it. The way they did it is by starting 15-20 years ago, and making sure every new replaced device supports it.
That's a tautology: "Despite the limitations of IPv4, we're still supporting all the applications that can work within the limitations of IPv4".
Lots of potential P2P applications (that might solve a lot of problems with have with the current centralised model of the internet) either don't make it past the drawing board because of NAT, or have to be encumbered with complex, expensive-to-develop, best-effort NAT-punching behaviour that burdens everyone involved (and can stop an application from being truly P2P by having to run things like STUN servers).
>NAT seems to always get a bad rep because it inconveniences the very few that want to have an end to end experience
I think there would be many more that wanted this if it were trivially easy to do
>but there has to be some sacrifice to keep the Internet running for the billions of users.
What's the sacrifice in using IPv6?