> It sounds like you are using terms in non-standard ways or have
> particular meanings in mind for generic terms. Do you want to configure
> the computer with a public IP address? Or do you only want the NAT box
> to know that that computer has a public IP address? If the latter, what
> could you want other than port forwarding?

We're planning to have multiple computers with public IPs and a
majority of computers with private IPs dynamically assigned. So it's
different than only wanting to forward ports on a single public IP to a
single computer on our network.

> What we did was turn off NAT in the router we got from our provider and
> use a separate Linux box to do our NAT (router on a stick). This allows
> machines on our network to be either configured with public IP
> addresses or, if they use DHCP, to get a NATed internal IP from the
> Linux box.

This sounds similar to what we want to accomplish. Are the public IP
addresses you use static? What do you do if they public IPs are dynamic
(our case)?

We are looking into a managed switch might be the solution to our
problem. I don't understand too much about them, but in vague terms we
would put the NAT'd traffic on VLAN 1 and the machines with public IPs
on a VLAN 2. Does this make any sense?

Nathan