Comment by tptacek
1 month ago
I think you're on my side in this discussion, but I have to say you can't really point at an RFC and say it settles an argument; RFCs can also be wrong about stuff, and the further you get from bits laid out on the wire, the less trustworthy they are.
> you can't really point at an RFC and say it settles an argument
This is pretty much the opposite of what I'm doing. I'm saying: look at that RFC, where they write that NAT filters incoming traffic! If even people writing RFCs say this, it is obviously an established notion of the term "NAT".
What I'm arguing against is this obsession with being technically correct; that NAT can only be literally "network address translation" and nothing else, and that you are incompetent if you think otherwise (plenty of examples for this further down).
What I'm saying is: look, things in the real world are messy, and terms can change their meaning.
Sure, I agree with you on that. I'm just fussy about authority citations to RFCs.