alt Hacker News> but do I really want my thermostat or doorbell or lock or garage door opener or light switch directly accessible on the Internet or is the nat serving a useful purpose?
You should have a firewall, regardless of v4/v6.
> but do I really want my thermostat or doorbell or lock or garage door opener or light switch directly accessible on the Internet or is the nat serving a useful purpose?
You should have a firewall, regardless of v4/v6.
You should, but the exposure from having no firewall is much higher without NAT. Packets with private network IPs are martians on the internet and will not find their way to your device unless they come from the same network and the ISP's infrastructure doesn't drop them. IPv6 addresses are routable across the internet so the packets will most likely get to your router, meaning anyone on the internet can talk to your LAN in the absence of a firewall.
The reality is that consumer router firmware is horrible in every aspect, especially security, and this isn't going to change with IPv6 rollout. I fear the most likely scenario is that ISPs will set up inbound firewalls on their end, and then we'll be even worse off than we are right now.