A few weeks ago, Twitter decided to push out an update to the iOS client software that helped them better monitize their service.  The quick bar at the top of the window that has now become infamously known as the “Dick Bar” forced me to look at all the trending topics on Twitter at the present time.  I don’t normally care for the junk that starts trending on Twitter, and after taking a good look at some of the inane things that kept popping up, I thought I was going to go insane.  It was right then and there that I had to take drastic measures to restore my sanity.

My distaste for Network Address Translation (NAT) is no secret to the people that follow me on Twitter.  That in and of itself could be a whole series of blog posts.  Instead, I decided to take my hatred of all things NAT and combine it with a trending hashtag in an attempt to have a little fun with things.  Usually, the hashtags I pick are simple questions or statements.  I figure by tacking on something about NAT, I’ll either confuse the non-network rock star people on Twitter or get a few laughs out of my followers.  Either way, it keeps me from doing more devious things in my insanity.  As such, some examples of what I have come up with so far:

#ifitwasuptome NAT would require an advanced feature license. That way, if you really want to use it, it’s gonna cost you.

NAT is a really bad idea. #SixWordFact

#saynoto NAT. It’s a gateway drug that leads to NAT-on-a-stick, policy-based NAT, and worst of all carrier-grade NAT.

As you can see, a seemingly innocuous hashtag has been corrupted for my crusade against the WD-40 of the network world.  WD-40 because if the packets are stuck on an RFC 1918 network, NAT helps get them unstuck.  I plan on having a lot more fun with this game.  I’ll even start adding in more topics, like IPv4.  If you have suggestions, don’t hesitate to shout them out.  If nothing else, it’ll help make Twitter a little more sensible for those of us in the networking profession.