Subject: (NAT) RAT web page

From: "Y. C. Tay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1998 17:00:01 +0800 (SST)

At the Chicago IETF, we presented RAT (Reverse Network Address Translators),
which is a protocol for reaching mobile hosts. We now have a web page

http://cram.comp.nus.edu.sg:8080/cram/rat

that contains a paper presenting our case for RAT,
the draft (draft-teoyeow-mip-rat-00.txt),
and an implementation (Linux user space).

This web page will be continually updated as the Orlando IETF approaches.
Feedback on the idea, the draft and the code will be greatly appreciated.

Mobile Computing Group
National University of Singapore

================================
Why RAT?
--------

Mobile IP (MIP) deployment is stalled by a chicken-and-egg trap.
We believe that RAT can break this "no deployment/no application" cycle 
by leveraging on the fast-spreading infrastructure of NAT boxes.
Specifically, RAT
(1) uses applications (e.g. browsers) for location registration and
(2) replaces tunneling by address translation for traffic forwarding.
Thus, instead of deploying a MIP infrastructure (of home and foreign agents),
mobility support can be obtained by modifying the NAT boxes and
adding registration servers to home networks.

Furthermore, (1) and (2) remove the need for operating system support
on the mobile node; this makes mobility support available to any
off-the-shelf laptop, once RAT is installed on the home network.

RAT inherits NAT's weaknesses and does not support connection handovers.
However, it interoperates with MIP,
so RAT's weaknesses can be removed by a migration to MIP.
Indeed, RAT is designed so that such a migration can be achieved incrementally.

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