VanLUG Email Archive
> Of course it's a good idea. If Linux called it NAT, then people might
> be led to believing that it's the same crappy NAT that you get from
> some proprietary vendor.
You mean the way linux calls their routing `routing', leading you
to believe it's the same crappy routing you get from some proprietary
vendor?
> Will, e.g., Cisco provide you with special ``helper modules'' to support
> network address translation for a particular application whose protocol isn't
> ``well behaved''?
Yes. See http://cco.cisco.com/warp/public/701/60.html for a list;
I don't know that it's up to date. Applications supported include
ICMP
FTP (including PORT & PASV commands)
NetBIOS over TCP/IP (datagram and name services only, session service support coming soon)
Progressive Networks? RealAudio
White Pines? CuSeeMe
Xing Technologies? StreamWorks
DNS "A" and "PTR" queries
H.323
NetMeeting
VDOLive
Vxtreme
> Mapping multiple internal addresses to one external
> address is only half the work.
>
> We could say that Masquerading is a product name for Linux's NAT plus
> helper modules.
You could, but consider this facile chain of reasoning: :-)
Product names are usually used to distinguish a particular proprietary
product from others in the field, so that even if someone else does
do the same thing, you can ask for that particular product (via
its trademarked product name). This process is designed to
de-commiditise products that would otherwise be commodities (for
example, `Kleenex(TM)' rather than `tissues'). That is a step away
from the open systems concept, which promotes networking functions
being commodities rather than features of particular vendors.
I never really thought of differentiating on product name, rather
than functionality, as a Linux-like thing to do.
cjs
-- Curt Sampson <
> 604-257-9400 De gustibus, aut bene aut nihil. Any opinions expressed are mine and mine alone. The most widely ported operating system in the world: http://www.netbsd.org