Subject: failure from bizarre NAT setup
To: None <tech-net@netbsd.org>
From: Steve Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
List: tech-net
Date: 04/22/2004 01:15:03
The hotel I'm currently staying at has a bizarre NAT+gateway that's 
caused me an unusual problem: ssh and telnet die with 

	"Can't assign requested address"

I suspect, but haven't proved, that the problem is related to messages 
like this:

   fetchmail: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "machshav.com IN AAAA", got type "A"

ssh is, I think, trying to get the local address, getting some bizarre 
answer, and finding itself unable to bind to it.  I've bypassed the 
problem by putting a BindAddress statement in my .ssh/config file, but 
I shouldn't have to do that.  Rebooting worked yesterday, but that 
feels very Windows-like: if your system doesn't work right, reboot and 
see if that helps.  Ugh.

Does anyone have any clean suggestions on how to *fix* the problem?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb