Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderI submitted this because it is the best summary of NAT I have read, and it goes into some of the technical details. Kudos to tailscale for writing this.
> (NATs do not enhance security in any meaningful way, but that’s a rant for another time.) Eh, I'm not sure I agree. People plug all kinds of weird and wonderful crap into their home networks, they turn off their Windows firewall and allow connections to RPC ports, all sorts of nonsense. The main factor that prevents even more stuff being exposed to the internet than now (and there's a lot exposed already) is the prevalence of IPv4 NAT devices…
The article (like many others) distinguish between easy NAT (endpoint-independent) and hard NAT (endpoint-dependent symmetric NAT), but does not discuss how real-world NAT devices behave (whether they are predominantly easy NATs or hard NATs). In reality, home routers are generally Linux-based and share netfilter NAT implementation. And how this implementation behaves? Well, it is a symmetric NAT masquerading as a port-restricted cone NAT. While it is symmetric NAT, it tries to reuse internal port as external…
Discovered via a shoutout from hole punch video https://www.youtube.com/live/nuK_PqvTQxo?feature=share Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30719137
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 846
- Total comments
- 172
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-08-21 | How NAT Traversal Works | psanford | 22 | 0 |
| 2020-08-22 | How NAT Traversal WorksFirst breakout | signa11 | 162 | 28 |
| 2022-01-22 | How NAT Traversal Works in Tailscale | madacol | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-03-17 | How NAT traversal works (2020)Best thread | robocat | 351 | 37 |
| 2022-03-18 | How NAT traversal works (In Tailscale) | pcr910303 | 3 | 0 |
| 2023-06-28 | Tail scale NAT traversal (2020) | yonz | 1 | 1 |
| 2023-08-02 | How Nat Traversal WorksHall induction · Latest 20+ point return | punnerud | 305 | 106 |