[gm]

That's a very pre-emptively defensive statement... Why doesn't HN like to hear this?

[anonomousename]

NAT makes it significantly harder to self host things, and as a consequence limits decentralization.

[maccolgan]

Which makes it easier for typical HN employers and YC startups (esp the social media kind) to stay afloat.

[exabrial]

I've been downvoted in the past for pointing out what everyone says works in theory vs what actually happens in the real world.

[dang]

Ok, but please don't bait the community like that. Pre-emptive defensiveness puts a negative torque on conversation.

[Arnt]

NAT works for some use cases, not so well for others.

I know a database that's updated every night via a server-to-server connection that passes five levels of NAT, and when that crontab broke someone had to fix it by finding and correcting a bug in a 1500-line NAT configuration on one important router where the consequences of a mistake would be very bad indeed.

It works in the sense that the database is updated, but I cannot help thinking of Truth 3 in RFC1925.