[ih] The invention of what we now call NAT

[John Levine]

It appears that Brian E Carpenter via Internet-history <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> said:
>On 24-Apr-25 07:57, Scott Bradner via Internet-history wrote:
>> in RFC 1631 Paul credits Van for "address reuse"
>> 
>> Acknowledgments
>> 
>>     This memo is based on a paper by Paul Francis (formerly Tsuchiya) and
>>     Tony Eng, published in Computer Communication Review, January 1993.
>>     Paul had the concept of address reuse from Van Jacobson.
>
>That was (given publication delays) ~simultaneous with US patent #5371852 filed October 14, 1992. The inventors on that patent were Clement R. Attanasio and Stephen E. Smith,
>who I'm guessing were both at IBM Poughkeepsie.

They were at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights.  I found a bio for Attanasio in an IBMJRD article.

 There's a lot to unpack in the patent, and some interesting prior art, but there's definitely NAT in there. I guess it was
>just another case of great minds thinking alike.

Agreed, the first five claims describe NAT. The addresses in SNA were too small
and I recall some kludgery in connecting SNA networks that might have been the
inspiration for their work.

R's,
John