ShellMonkey

What you might call a stateful NAT is really a 1-1 NAT, anything going out picks up an IP and anything retuned to that IP is routed back to the single address behind the NAT. Most home users a many to one source nat so their internal devices pick up a routable IP and multiple connections to a given dest are tracked by a source port map to route return traffic to the appropriate internal host.

Basically yes to what you said, but a port forward technically is a route map inbound to a mapped IP. You could have an ACL or firewall rule to control access to the NAT but in itself the forward isn't a true firewall allow.

Same basic result but if you trace a packet into a router without a port forward it'll be dropped before egress rather than being truly blocked. I think where some of the contention lies is that routing between private nets you have something like:

0.0.0.0/0 > 192.168.1.1 10.0.0.0/8 > 192.168.2.1

The more specific route would send everything for 10.x to the .2 route and it would be relayed as the routing tables dictate from that device. So a NAT in that case isn't a filter.

From a routable address to non-route 1918 address as most would have from outside in though you can't make that jump without a map (forward) into the local subnet.

So maybe more appropriate to say a NAT 'can' act as a firewall, but only by virtue of losing the route rather than blocking it.

NAT in the sense used when people talk about at home is a source nat, or as we like to call it in the office space a hide address, everyone going to the adjacent net appears to be the same source IP and the system maintains a table of connections to correlate return traffic to.

The other direction though, if you where on that upstream net and tried to target traffic towards the SNAT address above the router has no idea where to send it to unless there's a map to designate where incoming connections need to be sent on the other side of the NAT so it ends up being dropped. I suppose in theory it could try and send it to everyone in the local side net, but if you get multiple responses everything is going to get hosed up.

So from the perspective of session state initiation it can act as a firewall since without route maps it only will work from one side.

Assuming it's not a 1-1 NAT it does make for a functional unidirectional firewall. Now, a pure router in the sense of simply offering a gateway to another subnet doesn't do much, but the typical home router as most people think of it is creating a snat for multiple devices to reach out to the internet and without port forwarding effectively blocks off traffic from the outside in.

867-5309 (just a guess)

My most recent one didn't have a number. Maybe just someone pointing out open sign up instances to banish? Haven't bothered to look too far.

Ah, see that's where not reading is a problem. Just saw star link competitor and remembered something a recently about China looking to launch a similar system.

Odd they would phrase it as a 'starlink competitor' then though rather than 'a new ISP bid'. Wireless systems with directional antenna relays are not really new, not sure if any use laser particularly but the concept is essentially the same.

Yeah, more thinking the wasted time, resources, and emissions involved in building, launching, managing, and then whenever makes it down.

Take all that and make something useful instead, whatever happened to Google fiber being built out all over? More reliable, faster, doesn't involve sending piles of redundant satellites into space...

Yay, more space junk, and knowing Google they would abandon the whole thing a couple years in when it gets boring and leave them to rot.

Edit:not actually sat, which makes it weird to call a 'starlink competitor' then, but I don't write the headlines.

Yeah, give it to Russia or China who have never used military expansion for their own self serving purposes.

Fear and propaganda. The life blood of their party is in pushing the great fear of the big scary thing as a target to push through their rules to make the people safe...

It's nazis just before the camps go up and the Jews get put in train cars.

Also known as how to ensure a robust used car market until they pull their head out of their ass.

Not quite, but they did live through the great depression in the early 1900s, so things like keeping a box of buttons to fix your shirts and a basement full of canned anything on sale where pretty standard.

Well my grandma liked to say waste not, want not. Not much different than heating with dead dinosaurs I guess.