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Ottawa Canada Linux Users Group [OCLUG]
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Talk Title:
   "What is Network Address Translation (NAT)"
         or
   "Gimme an address NOW; I can't wait for IP Version 6"
         or
   "How to make sure pesky citizens remain CONSUMERS not CONTRIBUTORS
    in an Internet economy"

Scheduled delivery date: Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Summary and Rationale:

    I find myself on the Internet with only one IP address that I can use.
    How can I place a whole network of machines (at work, at home)
    onto the Internet sharing that one IP address?  (Use Source NAT.)

    But if all my machines are on the network using just one IP address,
    how can I connect from the Internet to just one of those machines?
    (Use Port Forwarding and Destination NAT.)

    Why is this wonderful NAT stuff evil and contrary to a free society,
    and what does that have to do with my ISP's terms of service?
    (Have you read your ISP terms of service recently?)

Examples of things we might do using Source NAT and Destination NAT:

    - put several machines on the Internet using one address
    - create mappings from the Internet back to some of the machines
    - have the machines create tunnels back to themselves in cases
      where we aren't allowed to create reverse mappings
    - suggestions from the audience ...

References:

    http://idallen.com/oclug/2004_nat/dnat.txt
    (A Detailed description of Destination Network Address Translation.)

    http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
    (How big brother and big media can put the Internet genie back in the
     bottle.)

Speaker: Ian! D. Allen
         www.idallen.com
         Algonquin College
         National Capital FreeNet

Literary Quote:

    "A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment.
     An unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment
     to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the
     unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw

     http://www.ag.wastholm.net/author/George_Bernard_Shaw

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Speaker Biography:

    Ian! D. Allen <idallen@idallen.ca> currently has a part-time
    day job as professor of Computer Studies at Algonquin College
    (teaching.idallen.com).  At night he writes Perl/awk/sed/shell
    scripts to automate things on his Linux desktop and does a tiny bit
    of volunteer system administration for the National Capital FreeNet.
    He critiques Linux code and works with the authors on getting fixes
    and enhancements added (e.g. shorewall, urpmi).

    Ian has an Honours BA in Psychology and a MMath in Computer Science
    both from the University of Waterloo, where he spent most of his time
    doing amateur theatre and rewriting Troff and the C Shell instead
    of working on his thesis.  His first computer course was WATFIV
    (FORTRAN) on punch cards in 1974.  His first email account was
    "idallen" on a Waterloo Honeywell 6050 GECOS system in 1976 where
    he learned the "B" programming language (precursor to "C").

    Ian programmed in "C" on Unix in 1976 (Unix V7 on a PDP-11/45) and
    started wandering the Internet around 1980.  His earliest recorded
    USENET news posting (available via Google Groups) was in November
    of 1981 from "decvax!watmath!idallen".  His first "home computer"
    was a VAXstation 3100 running Ultrix.  He acquired his first Intel
    computer (P166 Windows 95) in 1996 and his first Linux distribution
    (SuSE 5.2) at an OCLUG meeting a few years later.  He currently has
    three computers on his home network running various recent Mandrake
    Linux distributions.

    Ian is married to midwife Jan Teevan and plays step-father to her
    three young adults (who are now all out of the home).  He is taking
    Mandarin Chinese lessons for no particular reason.  He has two
    favourite sayings: (1) Less code is better code; and (2) If this
    were easy, everyone would be doing it.  http://idallen.com/resume/