I mentioned an article in the Internet Protocol Journal in today’s lecture, looking at the anatomy of Network Address Translators. The article is by Geoff Huston of APNIC, and is called Anatomy: A Look Inside Network Address Translators
The forward of the article reads:
Over the past decade numerous IP-related technologies have generated some level of technical controversy. One of these is the Network Address Translator, or NAT. This article describes the inner workings of NATs in some detail, and then looks at the issues that have accompanied the deployment of NATs in the Internet that appear to have fueled this technical controversy. NATs are a very widespread feature of today’s Internet, and this article attempts to provide some insight as to how they operate, why there is such a level of technical controversy about NATs, and perhaps some pointers to what we have learned about technology and the process of standardization of technology along the way.