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From: Archie Cobbs <archie@whistle.com>
Message-Id: <199605180106.SAA00742@bubba.whistle.com>
Subject: Re: ip masquerading
To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 18:06:07 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: dwhite@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu, clintm@ICSI.Net,
        FreeBSD-Questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199605172123.OAA20745@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at May 17, 96 02:23:27 pm
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> > > Is ip masquerading available for FreeBSD?  I would like to route
> > > my Amiga (via NetBSD/ethernet) through my PC (FreeBSD), and I
> > > only have one IP address.  I had this set up in Linux, but after
> > > I had a disk crash (which I don't think was Linux-related) I
> > > would like to give FreeBSD a try.  If there is no masquerading
> > > availabe, is it being worked on?
> > 
> > AFAIK, FreeBSD doesn't provide this capability.  I doubt it ever will, sinc
> > IP masqerading was considered "evil" by some of the group :-) 
> 
> Actually, the only people who believe that it is evil are those
> of us who believe FreeBSD should comply with IETF standards so
> that the backbone routers don't refuse to connect us to the
> Internet.
> 
> Which is to say, everyone who understands the problem.

Hmmm... guess I don't understand the problem. :-)

Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, ``masquerading''
means using remapped TCP and UDP port numbers to facilitate internal
hosts connecting to external servers, even though you only have one
machine really talking to the Internet. You give all of the outgoing
packets the same IP address but remap their source ports so when
traffic comes back you know who it is really destined for, do the
reverse mapping, etc..

Now, as far as the rest of the Internet is concerned, it just looks
like your one IP address happens to be generating a lot of traffic, no?
At least under the (not always valid) assumption that you don't run
out of ports in your remapping range. What standards in particular are
you referring to?

Of course, some protocols (which embed address information in the
packets, like FTP) will not work through this kind of hackery without
even more hackery, but at least it provides a capability to certain
folks who didn't have it before. Seems like it would be one's own
business whether they did masquerading or not.

-Archie

___________________________________________________________________________
Archie L. Cobbs, archie@whistle.com  *  Whistle Communications Corporation