nanog mailing list archives
Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox?
From: Brandon Martin <lists.nanog () monmotha net>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2018 11:55:58 -0400
On 10/16/18 10:05 AM, James Bensley wrote:
NAT/PAT is an N:1 swapping (map) though so a state/translation table is required to correctly "swap" back the return traffic. MPLS for example is 1:1 mapping/action. NAT/PAT state tables tend to fill quickly so to aid with this we also have timers to time out the translations and free up space in the translation table, and also track e.g. TCP RST or TCP FIN to remove entries from the table, so it's not "just swapping".
I do wonder, though, if these popular switching ASICs are flexible enough in terms of their header matching and manipulation capabilities to handle packet mangling and forwarding in hardware for a given NAT state entry while punting anything that requires a state change to a CPU for inspection and state update.
You'd need a somewhat more powerful CPU than your typical L3 switch might have, but it seems like you'd still be able to offload the vast majority of the actual packet processing to hardware.
State table size (on a typical "switching" ASIC) might be an issue before you could actually fill up a 10Gbps+ link with typical SP multi-user traffic flows, I guess, and given that a moderate-spec PC can keep up with 10Gbps without much issue these days, maybe it's a non-starter.
-- Brandon Martin
Current thread:
- NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Jason Lixfeld (Oct 09)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Edward Dore (Oct 09)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Tim Jackson (Oct 09)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Jason Lixfeld (Oct 09)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Wes Felter (Oct 10)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Paul Zugnoni (Oct 12)
- RE: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? adamv0025 (Oct 15)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? James Bensley (Oct 16)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Brandon Martin (Oct 16)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? joel jaeggli (Oct 16)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Paul Zugnoni (Oct 16)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Paul Zugnoni (Oct 12)
- Re: NAT on a Trident/Qumran(/or other?) equipped whitebox? Edward Dore (Oct 09)