On 2012-04-05 16:41, Bob Braden wrote:
On 4/4/2012 7:32 PM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> From: Steven Bellovin<smb(_at_)cs(_dot_)columbia(_dot_)edu>
> NAT didn't really exist when the basic shape of v6 was selected.
I didn't use the term "IPv6" deliberately, and I'm not going to get
into a
(pointless) debate about it now. However, I want to set the historical
record straight on this specific point, for any future historian who
reads
this.
I first heard the idea of NAT at an IAB architectural retreat in
California
(ISI maybe), quite a while before SIP (later IPv6) was proposed. I'm
not sure
exactly when that meeting was, but I think it was the meeting referred
to in
RFC-1287, which would make it January/June 1991 (not sure which one
was the
one where I recall Van making his L-NAT presentation - and I'm pretty
sure
Paul T had another variant of NAT, S-NAT, to discuss at the same
meeting). You
will find (brief) reference to their work in that RFC (published December
1991).
Noel,
This sounds about right.
Perhaps it is a stretch, but I think that that NAT concept owes much to
Postel's
"Magic Box" ("Multi-LAN Address Resolution", RFC 925, October 1984,
a much under-appreciated RFC.)
Isn't that closer to Proxy ARP? RFC 1027 credits RFC 925.
At CERN, we used an unpublished ad hoc NAT mechanism in about 1980
to interconnnect two copies of a homebrew network with absurdly
small addresses. The DECnet Phase IV 'hidden areas' mechanism was
also a widely used NAT-like hack in the 1980s.
Brian