No. 100 Carrier Grade NAT Impacts on Users, Markets and Cybercrime

IGF 2014 sub theme that this workshop fall under

Critical Internet Resources

Description

One tool for conserving IPv4 addresses is called Carrier Grade Network Address Translation, or simply CGN.

This workshop will discuss the implications of the deployment of CGNs on Internet users, applications designers, law enforcement and access providers.

However, the use of Network Address Translation doesn’t come for free. However, recent research shows that Internet application developers and Internet users will bear most of the impact of CGN implementation:

• How will developers of applications, such as online gaming and VoIP, cope with multiple CGN implementations - having to find workarounds for each?
• What will consumers do when they find that applications they count on no longer function correctly and that troubleshooting those problems becomes more difficult?
• Will Law Enforcement be able to manage when they find that traditional techniques for identifying and tracking criminals no longer work in the presence of CGNs?

This means that access to the Internet, that most basic foundation of the Internet’s global success, is substantially different than it was just five years ago. What does this mean for Internet Governance? Clearly, this is an area where new technology has implications for Internet governance and policy making.

The Internet ecosystem distributes decision-making throughout the network of networks and throughout the network of stakeholders. The decision of ISPs to deploy CGN technology is an example of a case where individual decisions at some points of the network have implications on a much wider range of Internet stakeholders and users.

Name(s) and stakeholder and organizational affiliation(s) of institutional co-organizer(s)

Samantha Dickinson
Private Sector
Lingua Synaptica

Has the proposer, or any of the co-organizers, organized an IGF workshop before?

no

Type of session

Panel

Duration of proposed session

90 minutes

Subject matter #tags that describe the workshop

#cgn #v6transition #access #security

Names and affiliations (stakeholder group, organization) of speakers the proposer is planning to invite

Robert Flaim
Law Enforcement community
US Federal Bureau of Investigation
Have you contacted the speaker? Y
Has the speaker been confirmed? Y (confirmed)

Geoff Huston
Technical community
APNIC
Have you contacted the speaker? Y
Has the speaker been confirmed? N

Emily Taylor
Business
Emily Taylor Consultancy Limited
Have you contacted the speaker? Y
Has the speaker been confirmed? Y (confirmed)

Joseph Warren
Business
SONY Entertainment - PlayStation
Have you contacted the speaker? Y
Has the speaker been confirmed? N (proposed)

Katim S. Touray
Civil Society
Development Consultant, Gambia
Have you contacted the speaker? Y
Has the speaker been confirmed? N (proposed)

Name of Moderator(s)

Mark McFadden, InterConnect Communications, Chepstow, Wales

Name of Remote Moderator(s)

Samantha Dickinson, Lingua Synaptica, Australia

Description of how the proposer plan to facilitate discussion amongst speakers, audience members and remote participants

Post a suggested list of questions for discussion in advance of the session and encourage participants to prepare their own stories of experiences with Carrier Grade NATs.

Encourage people to use Twitter to post their thoughts (in coordination with remote participation strategy). Use the overhead screen to display a Twitter that members of the room can respond to in realtime.

Description of the proposer's plans for remote participation

The panellist’s presentation will be made available prior to the IGF so that people participating remotely will be able to follow during the session. Social media will be used as an easy way for remote participants to ask questions and make comments. Key topics and remarks during the session will be tweeted for a realtime record of the session for those who are not able to participate directly. Where possible, public Internet facilities will be made available for people to share other materials related to the presentations and post notes and links to other resources related to Carrier Grade NATs.

Background paper

No background paper provided

Brief substantive summary of the workshop and presentation of the main issues that were raised during the discussions

The workshop aimed at exploring the technical, policy, legal and law enforcement implications of the implementation of Carrier Grade Network Address Translation in the Internet. The workshop was organized as a round table with key speakers who have been working at multiple levels in the Internet. Significant time was set aside for interaction between all participants in the workshop. Over 45 representatives of various stakeholder groups attended the session.

The session began with a technical introduction to what Carrier Grade Network Address Translation (CGN) is and why Internet Service Providers are motivated to implement it. The implications of IPv4 address exhaustion were explored and statistics about both IPv4 addressing and IPv6 addressing were presented. Few users are aware of whether they are behind CGN technology and even fewer are aware of the implications. After reviewing the current state of IPv4 addressing in the contemporary Internet, the workshop explored some of the effects of implementation of the technology. In particular, a discussion took place where an itemized list of things that break in the presence of CGN technology was presented.

Panelists began with a discussion of the technical implications of CGN. In one study, more than 50% of traffic examined appeared to transit through CGNs. This implies that CGN, as a technology, is much more widely deployed than many people recognize. The implications of this on the Internet’s architecture was examined with special emphasis placed on the early design of the Internet where intelligence was placed at the edges of the network and the core of the network was responsible for nothing more than transit.

A short discussion regarding CGN technology use in mobile networks. It was noted by some of the panelists that mobile networking is quite different from traditional Internet provision in that there is significant control over what gets attached to the network and there are seldom applications that rely on inbound connections to edge devices. As a result, it was noted that CGN technology was widely used in mobile networks – precisely because those networks and the devices attached are largely heterogeneous.

Panelists noted the implications on particular protocols, especially peer-to-peer protocols. There was a lively discussion on the economic likelihood of organizations abandoning CGN technology once it was deployed. An economic analysis of the long-term effects of CGN implementation was then presented. Panelists generally agreed that, once an Internet Service Provider moved to implement CGN technology, there was little economic incentive to move away from it.

The discussion was then opened up to the workshop as a whole. The implications of CGN in developing economies was explored with a discussion of the prevalence of CGN technology in those settings. Once again, the panelists and the workshop as a whole discovered that CGN technology is more widely deployed than many would have expected.

Conclusions drawn from the workshop and possible follow up actions

There was near consensus that CGNs are more widely deployed than most people realize. It was also largely agreed that CGNs have significant implications on end users and protocols on the Internet. However, it was also agreed that few users of the Internet realize the implications of deployment of this technology. Those implications were shown to cut across countries and continents – the problems are the same for developed and developing economies. The workshop concluded with a call for further efforts at raising the level of information available about the implications of CGNs.

Estimation of the overall number of participants present at the workshop

45

Estimation of the overall number of women present at the workshop

about half of the participants were women

Extent to that the workshop discuss gender equality and/or women’s empowerment

it was not seen as related to the workshop’s theme and was not raised

A brief summary of the discussions in case that the workshop addressed issues related to gender equality and/or women’s empowerment

Not applicable

Reported by

Mark McFadden

Workshop transcript

transcript

Youtube video

video

Attachments

No attachments provided