| > ISPs charge for public IP addresses Because NAT allows them to. > Do you want to be charged for a large enough block of public IP addresses to cover every networked device in your house? Yes. > or you'd have to learn IPv6, which is WAY harder than dealing with port forwarding through an IPv4 NAT. Back in 2005, maybe. Now, it works out of the box, either through SLAAC or DHCPv6. > Not to mention the premium you'd pay for a router with an actual firewall In 2005, maybe. Today, $10 routers off AliExpress have a firewall, probably set to "deny incoming" by default. > Port forwarding on a working router is generally a lot easier than a firewall. I know for a fact that the routers of at least two ISPs use the exact same page for port forwarding and the firewall. You don't enter iptables commands, you specify a list of ports that you want to be open for a specific address, except now you don't need to differentiate between "source port" and "destination port". |
> Because NAT allows them to.
NAT increases the available supply of IPv4 addresses, it makes them cheaper.
>> Do you want to be charged for a large enough block of public IP addresses to cover every networked device in your house?
> Yes.
You can actually just go out and buy a block of IPv4. https://auctions.ipv4.global/