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> How did IPv4 and NAT play any role in the dominance of Facebook, Airbnb et cetera? This is an analogy masquerading as an argument.

Because it made peer-to-peer no longer an option. Keep in mind that NAT is a poor man's firewall and once NAT'd systems were common peer-to-peer firewall transition became a real problem.

https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ (2003, still as relevant today as when it was written)

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so, that means going with IPv6 will bring back p2p networking? or do you see it's already too late?

p/s: it's more than relevant, it's eerily accurate in predicting our current situation

> so, that means going with IPv6 will bring back p2p networking?

It just might, but Cisco, Juniper and other vendors are already implementing NAT on IPv6.

https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/con...

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/network-addres...

So what you'll see is IPv6 on the web with the LAN stuck on IPv4 because too many dumb devices don't do IPv6 and IPv4 is enough for local traffic.

That alleviates the need for more addresses on the net while keeping things roughly the same locally.

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