SUMMARY: Network Address Translation Software

From: Jay Morgan (jmorgan@qualix.com)
Date: Wed Jan 28 1998 - 09:49:41 CST


Hi again,

My original Post:

>I've seen some requests out there for similar software, but have not seen
>any >summaries come back.
>
>I'm looking for Inexpensive or Freeware software that would provide me
>with >address translation (NAT) functionality for my SPARC 5. I've got a
>SPARC 5 >workstation (64MB RAM, Solaris 2.5.1 - recent recommended
>patches) at home
>that I would like to use as an internet gateway for the other machines at
>home,
>so I don't have to switch cables from machine to machine when connecting
>to the
>internet. I don't need a dedicated connection, and would not like to have to
>dump tons of money into getting a CIDR (or whatever they're calling it these
>days) from my ISP.
>
>What I'd like is for my Sun to see traffic from my local net destined for the
>internet, connect via my ISDN TA to my provider and do network address
>translation to the internet, and then time out the connection after 10-15
>minutes of inactivity. I can handle the PPP stuff (If I can just remember
>what
>I did at my old job :-), but haven't seen anything to provide the NAT
>function
>without going out and buying something like Firewall-1 for big bucks.
>
>Any ideas?
>I will summarize if I get any responses.

Thanks to:

David Schiffrin <daves@adnc.com>
Kenn Owen <kowen@aip.org>
Joe Pruett <joey@q7.com>
Michael Pavlov <misha@ml.com>
Birger A. Wathne <birger@Vest.Sdata.No>
Matthew Stier <Matthew.Stier@tddny.fujitsu.com>
Dave Wreski <dave@nic.com>
Troy Wollenslegel <troy@intranet.org>
David L. Markowitz <David.Markowitz@litronic.com>
pauly@katana.com (Paul H. Yoshimune)
Mark Henderson <mch@squirrel.com>
Joseph S D Yao <jsdy@gwyn.tux.org>
Rachel Polanskis <rachel@photon.nepean.uws.edu.au>
Rogerio Rocha <rogerio@bvl.pt>
Marcos Assis Silva <assis@uel.br>
Craig Nelson <craig@jetcity.com>
Aggelos P. Varvitsiotis <avarvit@cc.ece.ntua.gr>
Nedeljko Miljevic <miljac@solidinfo.com>
Stephen Frost <sfrost@mitretek.org>
(please forgive me if I accidentally missed your name here. As you can
see, a lot of people replied) Thank you ALL!

The answers:

The recommendations were mixed, however most of the people recommended
IPFILTER. A couple of links were provided for this:
http://cheops.anu.edu.au/~avalon/ip-filter.html
http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/
Based upon my understanding of the product, this looks like the most useful
utility for my personal situation. When I get a chance to load a compiler
on my system, I'll look at compiling and trying it.

Some of the people mentioned TIS's firewall toolkit which provides a proxy
for some protocols (ftp, telnet, http, news, x-windows - I think). It is
available from http://www.tis.com. One of the things I would need though
would be POP3 (and probably eventually IMAP). For this reason I don't think
this would be appropriate for me.

I even had some people who said to can Solaris and load Linux/SPARC.
Personally that is not an option, as I need the Solaris operating
environment for my work. Along that line was creating a separate boot
partition for Linux, but once again not an option for me, as I would need
Solaris running during most of those times. Not to mention that my
girlfriend will need to use this as an internet gateway, and teaching her
to shutdown and boot another partition would probably be more trouble than
it's worth. (She isn't very computer literate, just enough to get e-mail
and do a little browsing :-)

SOCKS was also mentioned, but I don't think that's the way I want to go. I
would rather go for a transparent solution that doesn't require Available
at: http://www.socks.nec.com/

In addition, if only http proxy is necessary Apache server with Proxy
directives were recommended. Found at: http://www.apache.org. Once again,
doesn't fit my needs.

There are also ISDN routers out there that will do NAT, and I would love to
do that, BUT I can't justify the money (minimum 400-500 dollars).

There was also a comment that the SPARC 5 serial ports are very slow, and
will hamper transfer speeds. It was recommended to get a cheap PC with a
high-speed serial port and run Linux/FreeBSD with NAT. - Hmmm... Something
to think about once I get my girlfriend working on my new Mac instead of
her old PC.

============================================================================
Jay Morgan (jmorgan@qualix.com) NASDAQ: QLIX
Consultant, Professional Services Group INTERNET: jmorgan@qualix.com
Qualix Group, Inc. WWW: http://www.qualix.com
1900 S. Norfolk St., Suite 224 DIRECT: (770) 522-8611
San Mateo, CA 94403-1151 BEEPER: (888) 472-8518
MAIN: (415) 572-0200 page_jmorgan@qualix.com
FAX: (415) 572-1300
============================================================================
Windows 95: n.
32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit
operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2
bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition.



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