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From: behrensm@river.it.gvsu.edu (Matt Behrens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: IP Masquerading possible? Perhaps transparent proxies?
Date: 12 Mar 1997 17:51:34 GMT
Organization: Grand Valley State University
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Ted Mittelstaedt (tedm@agora.rdrop.com) wrote:

: In article <5fhluh$r24@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>, brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org (Brian Somers) says:

: >Also on Charles Motts site is the natd program (soon to be part of
: >-current).  It sits on an arbitrary IP or interface and does all the
: >nice things that Charles Motts stuff does (using the same code).
: >It's written by Ari Suutari <ari.suutari@ps.carel.fi>, and works
: >with 2.2 and 3.0.

: I noticed that, and I'm wondering what the difference is between that
: and ipfw is.  It seems as all these translation programs use each
: other's code, and I don't understand the point of putting all the effort
: into them when NAT is really something that should be an integral
: part of the distribution in the first place.  Do these different
: approaches really have pros and cons?  It seems as though they all are
: doing the same thing.

Can't believe my thread is still going ;)

Well, after migrating my system from 2.1.6-RELEASE to 2.2-GAMMA (the
upgrade procedure left too much stuff hanging, so I backed up some stuff
and reinstalled from scratch), I use natd & pppd as opposed to the user
mode ppp program (I enjoy being able to BACKGROUND things that I no longer
need to control!)

natd and ipfw work hand-in-hand to provide the network translation.  natd
is also much more powerful than ppp+pktAlias, because it can work over any
interface, regardless of how it's invoked or whether it's even PPP.  Say I
had an ethernet connection to the Internet on one machine, I had a class C
network to work with, and I had 1,000 machines on the local LAN that
needed to access the Internet.  natd can do this.  ppp+pktAlias can't. 

As for having this be an integral part of the distribution, I wholeheartedly
agree. :)

--
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