(racoon 888) Re: Racoon NAT-T Progress?

Matt Titus <[email protected]> wrote:

> How did the implementers address the IPR issues? Microsoft and Cisco (at
> least) still have patent claims pertaining to NAT traversal and UDP 
> encapsulation.

Here is the trick: we don't care about it. Ipsec-tools developers live
in countries where software patents are not legal: This IPR claim cannot
have any grounds in european countries.

ipsec-tools documentation still warns the user that there might be a
problem.
     --enable-natt:
             Enable NAT-Traversal. This needs kernel support, which is
             available on Linux. On NetBSD, NAT-Traversal kernel support
             has not been integrated yet, you can get it from here:
             http://ipsec-tools.sourceforge.net/netbsd_nat-t.diff
             If you live in a country where software patents are legal,
             using NAT-Traversal might infringe a patent. 

But I'm still interested by prior art that would invalidate the IPR
claim in countries such as US. I wrote NetBSD kernel NAT-T support and I
had to refrain committing it to NetBSD CVS repository because NetBSD has
a legal existance in the US, where software patents are a reality. The
NetBSD kernel patch is available from ipsec-tools, but it would be nice
to have it integrated in NetBSD. 

-- 
Emmanuel Dreyfus
Il y a 10 sortes de personnes dans le monde: ceux qui comprennent 
le binaire et ceux qui ne le comprennent pas.
[email protected]