X.25 as a model for NAT boxes - NOT

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand]

At 09:31 30.11.99 -0500, John Day wrote:

>I would tend to agree.  As I have said elsewhere, NATs in and of themselves
>do nothing wrong.  They are doing things within the Internet/Network Layer
>that are perfectly legal.  (In essence, they are treating the network
>address in much the same way that X.25, ATM, and MPLS treat their
>addresses.)

No. They are treating the network address (+port) in the same way that X.25 
and ATM treat their VC/VP identifiers.

In the X.25/ATM case, that's the way those networks were designed; what is 
called addresses in those designs are *not* mashed around by the switches 
(apart from the cruelties that prefix add/remove does to X.25 addresses 
that transit service provider boundaries).

This is not how IP was designed.

I would have a hard time proving from Descartes' first principles that this 
is "wrong". I have no hesitation at all in saying that I find it extremely 
distasteful.

                  Harald A

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
[EMAIL PROTECTED]