network gateway with a foreign IP address

[max]

Claude Jones wrote:
> On Sat April 12 2008, John Cornelius wrote:
>> I gather that it's simply a case of you moving from direct connection to
>> the Internet to a connection that's behind your Cisco router. I further
>> presume that the (nominal) 70.x.x.120 address belongs to the Cisco. In
>> that case you probably don't want to do what you propose.
>>
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts, and yes, your surmising is correct
> 
>> Your box should be set up on the internal LAN subnet in the normal way.
>> All of the interesting configuration should be done on the Cisco router
>> by setting up source and destination NAT so that internet traffic on
>> specific ports addressed to the Cisco are routed to your box and
>> responses are automatically routed back through the Cisco to their
>> destination.
>>
> 
> I viscerally believe you're correct, here - else why is this the way this is 
> universally done, but I sure could use some better technically grounded 
> expertise in the whys and wherefores
> 
>> Trying to deal with this issue from inside the LAN rather than in the
>> router will most likely lead to frustration since whatever you do will
>> be fragile and probably break often if it works at all.
> 
> This is where I need better argumentation...if you can help, it would be 
> appreciated. Specific examples of why it's a bad idea, security problems that 
> could occur, other issues...unfortunately, this configuration has been handed 
> to me, it's not my idea, so I need to understand what's wrong with it and be 
> able to offer sound arguments for the more conventional approach, if there's 
> is a really sound technical reason for not doing it this way. 
> 
> I'm also dealing with the fact that another Linux box, a mail server, has been 
> moved on to this new FIOS lan and configured using the hack that I cited in 
> my original post, and is working quite nicely - unfortunately, I don't 
> clearly understand how to implement that hack on Fedora, but, I'm getting 
> the "if Jack could do this with his Debian box, why can't you with your 
> Fedora?"....
> 
I saw a video once, world's most unbelievable videos or some such, of a 
guy who's chute failed to open. The camera tracked all the way down, 
this guy jumped right up and started running around shouting "I'm alive" 
. Lucky bastard. Soft marshy ground saved his ass. Most people who have 
a chute that fails to open don't usually survive. That's in case you 
can't make a technical argument or more likely even if you can it sounds 
like it will fail because the other people are already convinced it 
should work out ok. Personally I can't make the technical argument 
against....yet but it sure doesn't sound right. I have worked to very 
limited degree with Cisco routers but you can do alot of config in there 
and as others have pointed out the box on LAN should be oblivious to 
what the router does anyway.

Good Luck,

Max