Where NAT disenfranchises the end-user ...

Mon Sep 10 02:00:03 UTC 2001

On Sun, 9 Sep 2001, Adam McKenna wrote:

> 
> On Sun, Sep 09, 2001 at 11:30:26AM -0700, woody weaver wrote:
> > 
> > I'm not sure who was first, in terms of IOS NAT and ip_masq.  If memory
> > serves (and it usually doesn't) then 11.2 was released around Aug 97.  I
> > don't see any easy way to identify the release date.
> 
> Unfortunately, I let my urge to smack Meyer down mask the original intent of
> my message.
> 
> To tell you the truth, I don't really care what products were shipping NAT
> first -- the fact still remains that NAT was not some hack created by a small 
> group of people so that the "poor dialup user" could take revenge against the 
> evil ISP that won't give out more than 1 IP for $20/month (as Meyer would 
> have you believe).  It is a documented standard, brought about by the IETF as 
> a means of conserving IPv4 space.

Right, the tradition has roots at least a few years further back
in the hack created by the "poor dialup shell account user" to allow
them to get SLIP (and, at some point, CSLIP and PPP) access to the net
without needing their own IP assigned by using a shell server they had an
account on, with it's IP address.  First done in TIA, then SLiRP.

That was... 1994 or earlier.

And TIA is essentially NAT, implemented in a manner that would be
considered peculiar compared to today's common implementations.

Hmm... guess even then it was at least partly used to conserve IP
addresses, especially when handing out static IPs to every dialup
user was more common.  I know of a few universities that used to
hand out SLIP accounts with static IPs quite freely, but then
switched to recommending people use TIA where they could.  That
became irrelevant later, of course, when support for dynamically
allocated SLIP addresses became widespread, along with PPP.  So in
this case it was both "preserve IPs" and "take revenge against the
evil (provider of some sort)".

However, note that things "created by the IETF" are normally created
by a small group of people with their own agendas.  And that there can
be a big difference between the reasons a so-called "standard" was 
introduced and the reasons why people deployed it.  But it seems quite
true that the demand from dialup/DSL/etc. usres for NAT only really 
ramped up after deployment in more corporate settings ramped up.

(sorry, I couldn't resist.  Anyone looking for _real_ content on 
nanog is already ignoring this thread, so why not... thankfully, 95%
of the irrelevant content on nanog is in long, easily ignored threads.)