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Date:      Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:04:03 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "Steve Bertrand" <iaccounts@ibctech.ca>
To:        "Minnesota Slinky" <mnslinky@hotmail.com>
Cc:        'FreeBSD-questions' <questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: How many hosts can utilize one NAT server?
Message-ID:  <4159.209.167.16.15.1087995843.squirrel@webmail.ibctech.ca>
In-Reply-To: <000a01c458a9$acce8730$6501a8c0@Nomad>
References:  <000a01c458a9$acce8730$6501a8c0@Nomad>

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Minnesota Slinky said:
> I was wondering how many hosts can a single NAT server server?  I
> couldn't find it on the net, although I know it's there somewhere.

It really depends on a couple of things...

First, the horsepower of the box. If you want 1-10 users, an old pentium
90 will do just fine (from my experience), however with hundreds of users,
that just won't do.

Second, it depends on what IP addressing scheme you have used. For
instance, if you use 192.168.250.0/24, then that leaves you room for 253
clients. (.0 designates the network, .255 denotes the broadcast addr and 1
more IP is needed for the gateway itself).

If you use 172.16.0.0/16, then you have room for ~65,000 clients. I don't
know if FBSD and natd can scale that high (perhaps due to hardware
limitations), but that's the theory.

I've used a FBSD firewall against several thousands of users, however it
was not running natd, just IPFW. It's a P2, 1.7Ghz with 1024M of memory.

Hope this is what you are looking for.

Steve

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