Ed, you seem to be ignoring the difference between identification,
location, and routing. What the post office does is routing, not NAT.
The NAT problem is a problem because IP addresses mix the concepts
of identification and location in a single bit string. There's nothing
natural about it, at least nothing more natural than shooting
oneself in the foot.
Brian
Ed Gerck wrote:
>
> "Steven M. Bellovin" wrote:
>
> > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ed Gerck writes:
> >
> > >
> > >Actually, in the UK you can do just what you wish ;-)
> > >You give a name to your house (say, "The Tulip") and
> > >the post office knows where The Tulip is. If you move,
> > >you can do the same at your new location, provided
> > >there is no conflict. This seems to be more similar to the
> > >notion of using an IP number as a name -- but isn't this
> > >why we need DNS? ;-)
> > >
> >
> > And if you move from London to Belfast, this will still work?
>
> In the UK, as I said. I would think that other countries may have
> a similar system. Note that this is a natural example of NAT,
> in which the post office is doing the address translation to a local
> address that only that post office knows, but which is globally
> reachable through that post office. And the post office does so
> without changing the global addresses or the local addresses.
>
> I don't want to be philosophical about this, but IMO this example
> actually supports the view that NATs are naturally occuring solutions
> to provide for local flexibility without decreasing global connectivity.
> The Internet NAT is perhaps less an "invention" than a translation of
> an age old mechanism that we see everywhere. We use the same
> principle for nicknames in a school for example.
>
> IMO, it is thus artificial to try to block Internet NATs. Far better would be
> to define their interoperation with other network components that we also
> need to use, in each case.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ed Gerck
