Netopia R910 manual User’s Reference Guide

C-188 User’s Reference Guide

When the Netopia R910 establishes a connection over its WAN interface with another router it uses the Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). Within PPP there is a Network Control Protocol (NCP) called Internet Protocol Control Protocol (IPCP), which handles the negotiation of IP addresses between the two routers, in this case the Netopia R910 at the customer site above and the router at the Internet service provider (ISP).

If the Netopia R910 calls the router at the ISP with NAT disabled, the Netopia negotiates its LAN interface address (as specified in IP Setup within the Netopia R910's console) with the router at the ISP through IPCP and then sets up routing. From the diagram on the previous page you can see that the address for the Netopia R910 is 192.168.5.1 and the address of the router at the ISP is 200.1.1.1. Assuming that the addresses negotiated by the routers are valid and unique for the Internet, the Netopia R910 and the hosts on its LAN would be able to access the Internet.

If the Netopia R910 calls the router at the ISP with NAT enabled, instead of negotiating the LAN interface address, the Netopia R910 suggests the address 0.0.0.0 through IPCP. When the router at the ISP sees this all-zeros IPCP request, the router can either pull a free dynamic IP address from its pool and assign it to the Netopia R910’s WAN interface or, if configured to do so, it can match the Netopia R910's incoming connection profile and assign a preconfigured static IP address to the Netopia R910's WAN interface.

From the diagram, you can see that the IP address assigned to the Netopia R910's WAN interface is 200.1.1.40, while the IP address assigned to the LAN interface remains the same. The LAN interface address 192.168.5.1 is thus hidden from the ISP and the Internet, and the Netopia R910 only has a single valid IP presence on the Internet. The LAN interface IP address for the Netopia R910 can be any IP address; however, it is recommended that you use the IANA-specified 192.168.X.X Class C address range, which is used for networks not attached to the Internet. This address range is described in RFC 1597.

The dynamic IP address acquisition on the WAN interface of the Netopia R910 is one of several features of NAT. Another is the mapping of locally assigned IP addresses to the single globally unique IP address acquired by the Netopia R910 on its WAN interface. NAT employs several things to accomplish this seamlessly. You must look at the formatting of an IP packet before IP address remapping can be explained.

Every IP packet that is transmitted across the Netopia R910’s LAN interface or across the WAN interface to the Internet contains several bits of information that indicate to any device where the packet is going and where it came from. In particular, you have the source and destination port and source and destination IP addresses.

A port is used within IP to define a particular type of service and could be either a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) port or User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port. Both TCP and UDP are protocols that use IP as the underlying transport mechanism. The major difference between TCP and UDP is that TCP is a reliable delivery service, whereas UDP is a “best-effort” delivery service. A list of well-known TCP or UDP ports and services can be found in RFC 1700.

If Workstation A wants to communicate with a World Wide Web (WWW) server on the Internet and the Netopia R910 does not have NAT enabled, Workstation A forms an IP packet with the source IP address of 192.168.5.2 and destination IP address of 163.176.4.32. The source port could be 400 while the destination port would be 80 (WWW server). The Netopia R910 then looks at this IP packet, determines the best routing method and sends that packet on its way across the WAN interface to the WWW server on the Internet.

With NAT enabled, the Netopia R910 does something different. For example, suppose that Workstation A again wants to communicate with the WWW server on the Internet. Workstation A forms an IP packet with the source IP address of 192.168.5.2 and destination IP address of 163.176.4.32, and source port could be 400 while the destination port would be 80 (WWW server).