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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.sdsmt.edu!news.mid.net!news.dra.com!hunter.premier.net!news-res.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.mathworks.com!zombie.ncsc.mil!newsgate.duke.edu!news-server.ncren.net!decwrl!usenet.cisco.com!iverson From: iverson@cisco.com (Tim Iverson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: NAT (was Re: IP Masquerading in user PPP?) Date: 17 Jul 1996 01:20:47 GMT Organization: cisco Lines: 56 Message-ID: <4shf5f$qva@cronkite.cisco.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960708224558.170A-100000@darkstar> <4s8dfj$p4o@agate.berkeley.edu> <4sej2c$9jp@cronkite.cisco.com> <4sf3bb$qgg@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: rottweiler.cisco.com In article <4sf3bb$qgg@agate.berkeley.edu>, Bruce A. Mah <bmah@CS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote: |Tim Iverson (iverson@cisco.com) wrote: |> thinking of a couple of hooks to an LKM; ie. the code would conceptually |> occupy the proper spot in the TCP/IP stack, but would not be part of the | |ignorant of the mechanics of LKMs. The aesthetics of this still gives |me creepy-crawlies, but there are other people in the FreeBSD world I felt the same way until I wrote one. ;-) They're basically kernel code that is loaded at need. The very nicest thing about them is that they encourage a design with a very well defined interface between the LKM module and the static kernel. This generally makes them much easier to play with (isolates bugs, encapsulates functionality, etc.). |(After participating in a discussion of this issue, I've also come |to the conclusion there's some religion involved, too.) NAT is a can of worms. 'Course, if you like fishing ... |> non-technological reasons. In this case, my need for it is entirely due to |> the artificially created billing structure of my ISP. IMHO, free versus |> $250/mo. is a pretty strong argument for NAT! | |It sounds to me like this is a pretty strong argument for: | |1. SOCKS, which (as I understand things) puts everything up in userland. | |2. Switching ISPs in favor of someone (if they exist) who has a more |sensible billing structure. :-) I actually looked into both of these. SOCKS, unfortunately is not workable for me, since it pretty much requires sockified clients and I run apps that will never support SOCKS. So, one good solution down the drain. Switching ISPs is a potential solution, but it is also a roughly 3 month task. I've done it three times, and it's always a big hassle -- eg. it took Netcom 3 months to fix their MX records and another 4 to fix their UUCP based mail routing after I left them. My current ISP is fantastic, I *never* have to tell him how to do anything -- Netcom and Portal were so clueless that I had to give them step-by-step instructions on how to administrate their own systems; this was not what I was paying them for. Anyway, it seems to be fairly typical for ISPs to bill one of two ways: based on number of IP addresses rented out, or based on connection time. Time based billing would kill me. Right now I'm paying about $15/mo. for IP, shell, uucp news/mail for two domains, and WWW on the ISP's system. I'd like to find an ISP that did flat rate billing based on bandwidth (it does exist, but only for more bandwidth than I need). If you know an ISP in the South Bay that can do this *and* give me all the IP addresses I want, I'd love to hear it! - Tim Iverson iverson@lionheart.com