I'm CCing this response to the IP Masquerading list in case it
helps clarify this for someone:
>I'm new to the masq-list so could you please line out to me what the
>"old problem of incoming connections to previously unused ports" is ?
Well from my understanding, the way masquerading works is that when
an internal machine sends out a request to an external machine, the
port number of the request is recorded in some sort of table on the
Linux box. Then when responses come back from the external machine
to that port, it knows which machine to send the packets to based on
this table.
The problem is that if an external machine sends a packet to a previously
unused port, Linux does not know which internal machine to send it to.
Some programs, like NetMeeting which is what I'm trying to get working,
send out a packet on a port telling the remote machine to establish a
connection on another port. When that connection comes in, it won't
make it through Linux since that port had not previously been sent
through.
ipautofw is a program that inserts entries into this table, forcing Linux to
send incoming connections to certain ports to a particular machine, thus
getting around this problem.
Hope this helps,
DJ Graham J
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://techno.xvi.com
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