It may be important to note that oftentimes the same software 
accomplishes both of these things though.  Actually, often one piece of 
software handles all three, NAT, portforwading, and firewalling.  For, 
instance PF in openBSD does this.  I suppose IPTABLES does as well.

Austin


Craig White wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 09:03, daz@undertaker.homeip.net wrote:
> 
>>can someone please let me know if im smoking crack or not *inhale*.
>>
>>
>>nat = network address translation = outbound
>>
>>port-forwarding = forwarding a port from one box to another (i.e. public 
>>ip port 80 to internal non-route-able port 80) = inbound.
>>
>>nat != inbound.
>>
>>Am I correct here, or am I off?
> 
> ----
> smoking crack - I can't tell but is there a glass pipe anywhere about?
> 
> NAT and port forwarding are indeed 2 different things. 
> 
> NAT is all about routing all ports whether inbound or outbound. You
> could have NAT that routes traffic to public or private IP's but there
> would have to be a device / appliance to handle the routing.
> 
> Port forwarding would generally refer to one IP address on a
> firewall/gateway/router device where attempts to reach a specific port
> are sent through to a computer / appliance that is behind the firewall /
> gateway / router that has a private IP address.
> 
> Craig
> 
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