On Sun, 09 Sep 2001 17:42:25 PDT, Adam McKenna <adam-nanog@flounder.net> said:
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.
1) It wouldn't be the first time the IETF has standardized a hack. Anybody who doesn't think so is invited to read RFC822, section 3.1.4, ponder the example given, and ask why people were surprised that few 822 parsers were non-buggy. 2) It would seem to me that if your ISP is being difficult about giving out more IP addresses, using NAT to take revenge *is* conserving IPv4 space. You're restricting your usage of external addresses - just as an end user you're doing it out of financial considerations, not any grandiose altruistic for-the-benefit-of-the-net reasons. But then, we all know that altruistic suggestions are (a) off-topic for this list and (b) always create a flame-fest anyhow. ;) Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech