[ih] The invention of what we now call NAT

[Andrew Walding]

Wizards and Historians,
Someone please correct me if what I had heard was wrong.  Back in the BBS
days when those of us were considering/wanting to connect our BBS systems
to the TCP/IP world (which as I recall really was not successful -
certainly not for my BBS) one of the members of the Homebrew Computer Club
of Menlo Park came up with the idea to bypass the high cost of static and
public IP addresses by translating private address space to a single public
IP, therefore avoiding the cost of having multiple public IPs.  The
motivation for this was to avoid paying the service provider more money, of
course.  Every time we added a phone line and a modem, it cost more money
for our BBS's so we were all very sensitive about this.  Now, we used
tricks like "teen lines" and so forth to minimize costs, but the thought of
then having to pay for multiple public IP's for each line was cost
prohibitive for most of us along with the perhaps bigger question: why
would the TCP/IP network want BBS systems on it?

Anyway, I heard about this trick and the code to accomplish this way before
RFC 1631 (1994) was even a draft.  I would say this was in 1985 or so.
 Never saw it myself so it has always been a "tall tale" in my head.

Anyone know anything to confirm or deny this tall tale?
Andy

-- 
*Andrew M. Walding*

Direct: 214-659-1274
Twitter: @awalding
www.cellstream.com <http://bit.ly/2PzyatN>
www.netscionline.com <http://bit.ly/2PzbxWE>

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: The contents of this email message and any
attachments are intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain
confidential and/or privileged information and may be legally protected
from disclosure. If you are not the intended recipient of this message or
their agent, or if this message has been addressed to you in error, please
immediately alert the sender by reply email and then delete this message
and any attachments. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby
notified that any use, dissemination, copying, or storage of this message
or its attachments is strictly prohibited.