Subject: NAT patent

From: George Michaelson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 14:53:57 +1000

So, its the silly season, we don't have enough traffic on the lists since
the CFP spam got quashed. I'm bored of the Olympics coverage.

Who'se gonna put a toe in the water over the NAT patent?

My guess is that we should run a pool on the first person to post suggesting
its a good thing (tm) since "NAT ARE EVIL" and the work of the devil anyway.

My money is on people whose first names start with K or V.

cheers [ducks for cover]

	-George
--
George Michaelson         |  DSTC Pty Ltd
Email: [email-masked]    |  University of Qld 4072
Phone: +61 7 3365 4310    |  Australia
  Fax: +61 7 3365 4311    |  http://www.dstc.edu.au

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 09:44:16 -0400

I don't see how the patent will help unless cisco uses it to prevent
more NATs from being manufactured (not likely!).  either the patent
is indefensible in which case it has no effect, or the NAT vendors
will have to give money to cisco but they won't stop making NATs.

so it's probably irrelevant.

OTOH, if I owned that patent, I'd put it to good use...

Keith

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From: Jon Crowcroft <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 15:22:59 +0100

>>OTOH, if I owned that patent, I'd put it to good use...

the normal corporate use of patents is to stop someone else charging
you royalties for something covered by their patent - for example, 
cisco might need the NAT patent to stop someone charing them for fast
ipv6 technology:-)

 cheers

   jon

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From: "Gary E. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 12:30:57 -0700 (PDT)

Yo Jon!

Yes, but some years Texas Instruments made more on Patent Licensing
than the rest of the business combined.  We will just have to wait
to see if the other shoe drops.

RGDS
GARY
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary E. Miller Rellim 20340 Empire Ave, Suite E-3, Bend, OR 97701
	[email-masked]  Tel:+1(541)382-8588 Fax: +1(541)382-8676

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From: Christian Tschudin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 10:03:37 +0200 (MET DST)

Just restating what was commented on in Slashdot: the patent
is on the security, not NAT itself - rfc 1631 is referenced
and thus prior art. christian.

For reference, here is the abstract, copied from
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?&pn=US05793763__

Application number US1995000552807

A system and method are provided for translating local IP addresses to
globally unique IP addresses. This allows local hosts in an enterprise
network to share global IP addresses from a limited pool of such addresses
available to the enterprise. The translation is accomplished by replacing
the source address in headers on packets destined for the Internet and by
replacing destination address in headers on packets entering the local
enterprise network from the Internet. Packets arriving from the Internet
are screened by an adaptive security algorithm. According to this
algorithm, packets are dropped and logged unless they are deemed
nonthreatening. DNS packets and certain types of ICMP packets are allowed
to enter local network. In addition, FTP data packets are allowed to enter
the local network, but only after it has been established that their
destination on the local network initiated an FTP session.

> OTOH, if I owned that patent, I'd put it to good use...

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Christian Tschudin, Department of Computer Systems, Uppsala University, Box 325
S-75105 Uppsala, Sweden. <[email-masked]>, http://www.docs.uu.se/~tschudin