[149814] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Common operational misconceptions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Thu Feb 16 02:36:51 2012
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <20120215144715.18e65a55@w520.localdomain>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 23:34:02 -0800
To: John Kristoff <jtk@cymru.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:47 PM, John Kristoff wrote:
> Hi friends,
>
> As some of you may know, I occasionally teach networking to college
> students and I frequently encounter misconceptions about some aspect
> of networking that can take a fair amount of effort to correct.
>
> For instance, a topic that has come up on this list before is how the
> inappropriate use of classful terminology is rampant among students,
> books and often other teachers. Furthermore, the terminology isn't even
> always used correctly in the original context of classful addressing.
>
> I have a handful of common misconceptions that I'd put on a top 10 list,
> but I'd like to solicit from this community what it considers to be the
> most annoying and common operational misconceptions future operators
> often come at you with.
>
> I'd prefer replies off-list and can summarize back to the list if
> there is interest.
>
> John
I think one of the most damaging fundamental misconceptions which is
not only rampant among students, but, also enterprise IT professionals
is the idea that NAT is a security tool and the inability to conceive of the
separation between NAT (header mutilation) and Stateful Inspection
(policy enforcement).
Owen
