On Wednesday, August 10, 2022 08:55:20 AM Dan Ritter wrote:
> rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I.e., if a computer on the LAN contacted a computer outside the LAN, NAT
> > would allow incoming data from that external computer, but not allow
> > incoming data from other external computers.
>
> That's a slight confusion of NAT and packet filtering. NAT by
> itself doesn't do that.
Ahh, ok.
For posterity (I sometimes call her pos for short), I wanted to mention a dos
program named iproute written by David F. Mischler.
At most, this has only a slight similarity (it had some features) of the Linux
iproute.
I used it back in the day -- I wish I had kept a record of the incremental
changes I made in my LAN over the years, which at various times:
* included some now defunct hardware ("Network Interface Cards" that were
not Ethernet (well, at least not Ethernet as we knew it then or now -- among
other things it ran on a 93 ohm coax (RG-62 -- I probably still have some
coiled up in the basement if anyone needs it) -- and I've suspected it ran
something like some variation of RS-232 "under the covers", but "they" would
never tell you that.
* I forget which networking software ran on that hardware (under dos or
Windows), but, over the years, I ran quite a variety -- one was named "Lil Big
Lan" and featured an Indian on the logo, another, iirc, was named 10Net (no
relation, afaik) to the 10Net that exists today, and, I don't know, probably
at least 3 or 4 others.
To get more specific about the dos iproute program by Mischler, it was sort of
a monolithic program that could:
* control a dial up modem (it could control something other than an
ordinary dial-up modem, but I never used those at the time, so I don't
remember anything about them
* interface to Ethernet NICs
* do the functions of NAT and some filtering / firewalling (iiuc)
My point (or one of them) is that, being a monolithic program (at least from a
user's point of view), I just thought of it as performing NAT, and my
understanding of NAT was (and still is, I guess) influenced by what that
iproute could do -- it could do all of the things listed below, and I didn't
distinguish between what NAT did and what any built-in filtering / firewalling
may have done.
That iproute was a shareware program, and I think the version I (eventually)
used was v.94 (I may have started with an earlier version. That may have come
into being somewhere in the time period 1992 to 1994:
* that is only a guess based on the earliest dates in the documentation
that I could find for NAT (I believe I found such dates in an RFC, but also
statements in other places that NAT existed (in various forms) before it was
"documented" in an RFC
* another part of my guess is the guess that maybe v.94 was released in
1994.
I used iproute in a dedicated computer, and probably used it until I stopped
using a dial-up modem, which I'm guessing was well after 2000 -- I might have
some clues somewhere in various notes, but I don't want to go looking for them
at the moment.
At some point, version 1.10 was released (that may have been the last release)
and that was somewhat more of a commercial version as opposed to the earlier
shareware versions.
Just to make it clear, iproute could rout (serve as a router) to multiple
computers, I'm sure that I had at least 4 and maybe as many as 7 computers on
my LAN while using iproute.
As an aside, I'm trying to remember if I still used that iproute box when I
switched from coax Ethernet to twisted pair Ethernet -- I would have had to
change the NIC cards -- well, except maybe some of those could use coax or
twisted pair? I'm pretty sure I had some of those.
--
rhk
If you reply: snip, snip, and snip again; leave attributions; avoid HTML;
avoid top posting; and keep it "on list". (Oxford comma included at no
charge.) If you change topics, change the Subject: line.
Writing is often meant for others to read (legal agreements excepted?) -- make
it easier for your reader by various means, including liberal use of
whitespace.
If someone else has already responded to a question, decide whether any
response you add will be helpful or not ...
A picture is worth a thousand words -- divide by 10 for each minute of video
(or audio) or create a transcript and edit it to 10% of the original.
