Re: Number of Firewall/NAT Users

[ned.freed at innosoft.com]

> > There was even an analogy to NAT's "addresses embedded in the application data
> > stream" problem: if you had an address in your .signature, the gateway couldn't
> > translate it, so the person receiving your message saw an address they couldn't
> > use.

> I liked even better the horror story of the gateway that tried.....

> until someone wrote "this gateway translates jcb at host.company.com into
> john.c.braindead at company.com", and it came out to the recipient as
> "this gateway translates john.c.braindead at company.com into
> john.c.braindead at company.com".....which somehow failed to get the point
> across....

I've actually seen this happen. Mail system configuration files sent to us from
behind such a gateway were curiously corrupt when they reached us, and when we
fixed them and sent them back the errors were in what was received... Turned
out that someone took the corporate mandate to "remove all references to our
old name" a bit too seriously.

If memory serves, we used ROT13 to get around the translation, since
administrative turfs were such that an actual fix for the problem wasn't
possible.

				Ned