In a previous thread I was advised that according to my problems, I may use
a NATTED service as opposed to ROUTED one(thanks Mr.Chuck).
Does anyone expand about this service a little. I'm interested especially
regarding the following-
1. What is the drawbacks of this service in comparison to routed service?
2. Which kind of applications may not work properly under this
service(peer2peer??)
3. How can someone know if he has such a service?
4. Are there any other "levels" of routing services apart from routed and
natted?
5. What is the share of this service in the United States?
Thanks for any reference to my questions.
Mandi
Mandi,
NAT works fine, if all that you're doing is surfing the web. When you want to
run any server activity, it sux. IM, P2P, VPN - all require a visible presence
on the Internet. NAT hides you, which is good when you WANT to be hidden, not
good when you DON'T.
The advantage of NAT is that it's cheap and easy to provide. If you have a
single IP address, you can provide NATted service to your neighbours (assuming
that you have enough bandwidth). Providing a routed service requires planning -
you have to purchase a registered subnet, with enough addresses for your
intended customer base.
If you're lucky, your customers won't know that you're selling NATted service.
I have a bud in Thailand who looks to be going thru at least 2 NAT routers
(neither of them are his) at times.
The problem with NAT is the addressing makes it hard to run a server. You can
setup NAT traversal, but it requires special service setup in your router, and
won't work for more than one computer for each service requiring special
service.
The simplest way to find out if you're accessing the Internet thru a NAT router
is to run an IP detection, like
http://www.whatismyip.com/ . Then run ipconfig
from your computer, or look at the IP address on the WAN side of your NAT router
(if you have one). What is your outermost IP address? Compare that to the
address detected by WhatIsMyIP.
You can confirm your suspicions by using something like PingPlotter, which gives
you a trace between your computer and any public server. If you see your
service go thru any router with an IP address in any of the "private" IP ranges,
then you likely have NATted service.
10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)
172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)
192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)
<
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1918.html>
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1918.html
<
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/09/diagnosing-network-problems-using.html>
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/09/diagnosing-network-problems-using.html
Most ISPs in the developed countries run routed service, as they are registered
businesses with a reputation to keep, and lawyers to deal with. You can avoid
address space planning by using NAT, but you still have bandwidth and
reliability concerns. In third world countries like Thailand, this won't be a
problem. Between the possibilities, there could be a lot of questions.
