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It is impossible to address hosts behind NAT. Only the public IPv4 address is visible. It might have been possible to extend IPv4 by having each NAT hop add th
by ianburrell 3y ago
It is impossible to address hosts behind NAT. Only the public IPv4 address is visible.
It might have been possible to extend IPv4 by having each NAT hop add the internal IPv4 address as option header. Then it would be possible to refer to inside host directly with a list of addresses.
That isn't worth doing now because it would require rewriting everything to deal with the new protocol. For one thing, lots of NAT boxes remove all the option headers. The new protocol wouldn't be reliable.
- inopinatus 3y agoNot a counterexample exactly, but your remark reminded me of this eldritch horror: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-servers-dont-own-ips-anymore/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-servers-dont-own-ips-... TLDR: Cloudflare is using five bits from the port number as a subnetting & routing scheme, with optional content policy semantics, for hosts behind anycast addressing and inside their network boundary. Filed in my bookmarks under "abominations".
- jbernsteiniv 3y agoFrom the link: "A lot of Cloudflare's technology is well documented. For example, how we handle traffic between the eyeballs (clients) and our servers has been discussed" Already 1 sentence in and we've already got Eldritchian horrors with customers described as just their watery orbs in their skull.