Re:History of 127/8 as localhost/loopback addresses (2021)
by nousermane on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @03:15PM
(#31509210)
Games, audio/video calls, screen sharing - any peer-to-peer traffic is a royal pain in the back with NAT and CGNAT especially.
Larger providers (zoom, apple/facetime, twitch, ...) just set up relay servers and avoid p2p altogether - which cost money, increase latency/jitter, and decrease privacy. You can argue all of that are hidden costs of sticking to IPv4 for longer than we should have.
I think this elides the point really.
People don't know when an issue is because of ipv4, for a good example: network issues in online video games are often caused by being unable to NAT punch, lag can also be because connection information is relayed by some far away STUN server. Same with in-game voice chat.
Usually you need to set port forwards to make games work properly.
In the event of GCNAT a customer has no possible recourse.
But nobody understands the issue is largely because of IPv4, they just assume that's how it is, and assume the same issue would exist with IPv6