Activate NAT on Debian etch and Disable IPv6 support on Debian
Posted by Admin on September 10th, 2006
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What is NAT ?
network address translation (NAT, also known as network masquerading or IP-masquerading) involves re-writing the source and/or destination addresses of IP packets as they pass through a router or firewall. Most systems using NAT do so in order to enable multiple hosts on a private network to access the Internet using a single public IP address (see gateway). According to specifications, routers should not act in this way, but many network administrators find NAT a convenient technique and use it widely. Nonetheless, NAT can introduce complications in communication between hosts.
First, activate IP forwarding in /etc/sysctl.conf and add the following line
# Enable packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
If you have already this line just uncomment
Now you need to restart your networking services using the following command
#/etc/init.d/networking restart
Now you need to activate NAT itself in /etc/network/interfaces
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.255
up iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $IFACE -j MASQUERADE
Now you need to restart your networking services using the following command
#/etc/init.d/networking restart
Disable IPv6 support on Debian
IPv6 is still not widely accepted and even less used. Many networked applications in Debian are enabling IPv6 support anyway, which result in a drop in performance and longer delays in day-to-day use.
To disallow ipv6 kernel module autoloading, deactivate it in modutils or module-init-tools in /etc/modprobe.d/aliases.
To disable IPv6 name resolution in Firefox or other Gecko-based browsers, change the following option to true
network.dns.disableIPv6
If you are interested in debian IPV6 Project check here
July 16th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.254
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.255
up iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o $IFACE -j MASQUERADE
Probably a silly thing, but is not the network line here mixed up with the broadcast address? Should it not say something like this:
broadcast 192.168.1.255
network 192.168.1.0
May 12th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Yes, obviously! You are absolutely right!