Need clarification: masquerading

[Jeffrey Newquist]

Hi folks,

The NAT howto for Linux 2.4 states that masquerading
should only be used for dynamic IP connections.  Why
is this so?  My current understanding of what
"masquerading" means:

The masq host has a connection to the internet.  It
acts as a gateway for machines on its internal net. 
It rewrites outgoing IP headers with its own IP
address, and remembers which internal client made the
request.  When a response comes back from the
internet, the masq host passes that on to the
appropriate client.

This doesn't seem to me to require that IP be dynamic.
 The behavior I want is multiple clients behind the
gateway able to access the internet transparently.

Does simple SNAT with a static IP address allow the
functionality that I want?  What's the difference
between SNAT and masq?  Why couldn't a dynamic IP be
used with SNAT?

Thanks,
Jeff
jeff_newquist@yahoo.com

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