Re: X.25 as a model for NAT boxes - NOT

[John Day]

At 10:20 -0500 12/5/99, Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:
>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.
>
That was the whole point.   ;-)

Take care,
John