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Date:      Mon, 20 May 1996 22:44:55 -0700
From:      bmah@cs.berkeley.edu (Bruce A. Mah)
To:        Tony Kimball <alk@think.com>
Cc:        bmah@cs.berkeley.edu, questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ip masquerading 
Message-ID:  <199605210544.WAA28805@conviction.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 20 May 1996 19:25:34 CDT." <199605210025.TAA18598@compound.Think.COM> 

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Tony Kimball writes:
>    > 
>    > > From the masquerade host.  ICMP works fine, to the network
>    > > interface of the *system*.  UDP is not a host requirement.
> 				   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>    To Tony:  Are you saying that just because FTP, telnet, and Web don't 
>    run over UDP it's not important?  I respectfully disagree.
> 
> I'm meaning that lack of support for UDP would not make a masquerade
> scheme violate host requirements.

OK, got it.

>   Frankly I haven't clue one about
> how to implement UDP masquerade, never having so much as glanced at
> the problem.  

Me either.  It's hard, no doubt about it.

> To clarify another point:  I do not advocate a linux-style
> implementation of masquerade.   I'm just too ignorant of the
> alternatives to make a specific proposal, and too enthusiastically
> supportive of the functional goal to keep my mouth shut.
> A dangerous combination.

Well...I should clarify my POV (point of view) too, I guess.  I'm kind 
of a traditionalist (I used to work down the hall from the Berkeley 
CSRG, maybe that has something to do with it).  The idea of adding 
hacks to a system to support a workaround for ISP pricing makes me very 
uneasy (as do many of the newer developments on the Internet).  If 
that's FUD, so be it.

> TCP is *more* important the UDP, though, for the preponderance
> of "customers", that much seems obvious.  UDP is second-order.

Given that all the Web stuff relies on TCP, I agree.  For now.  But 
multimedia applications tend to rely on UDP (for example, all of the 
MBONE tools).  The idea of only being able to support specific 
applications really bothers me.  In some cases (i.e. a firewall) this 
exactly what is required.  But for general-purpose connectivity, I'm 
afraid that this will just result in people hanging more and more 
"warts" off the IP stack that will make it slower and harder to 
maintain (in addition to my other gripes earlier).

Bruce.






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