> Typical NAT routers don't handle self-referencing IPs well.  In other
> words, if my NAT router's WAN address is 123.45.67.89 and a LAN machine
> (say, 10.10.10.1) tries to talk to 123.45.67.89:4321, it will fail.  I'm
> using a SonicWall SOHO firewall/router, and this is the case with it.  I
> believe Linksys and the other really common ones behave similarly.  It's
> annoying, but true.

Sounds broken to me.  I'm currently behind a cheaper than cheap Belkin
all-in-one 802.11b/DSL/Ethernet Router/NAT box and I can telnet to my
freenet node using the internet IP address just fine.  A tracert shows that
resolution stops at the nat box without going into the outside world.

> The bottom line is:  A local machine with NAT cannot reliably figure out
> what routable IP it has without outside help.  Luckily, we have a network
> of outside help, and seed nodes are required for anything to work, so we
> just need our protocol to handle some form of, "What IP do I look like?"
> "You look like IP such-and-such."

Eerr, did you forget what I was originally commenting on?  I never ever
suggested a NATd freenet node could figure out its internet IP address
without outside help.  I suggested in fact almost exactly what you say in
the above paragraph, except with a tweak to prevent believing evil seednodes
that could be lying:

A asks B, what is my IP
B replies with aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd
A generates a new, random, public/private key pair
A connects to http://aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd:ppppp/servlet/self where ppppp is A's
FNP port and 'self' is the new servlet I proposed that generates a printable
ASCII page containing a trivial message (e.g. "This Is Me") encrypted using
the public key.
A then decodes the message using the private key to see if the IP address
reported by B was in fact correct.

If B told A the wrong IP address (maliciously or otherwise) and A began to
advertise that as its contactable address, A would effectively be cut out of
the network.  Without validation of the IP address, all it would take is a
few mailicious nodes to cut out all the reliable nodes from freenet.  And
that is all I was saying.

d


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