What is "natd" and why is it using 80% of CPU?

Question

What is "natd" and why is it using 80% of CPU?

I noticed last night that my CPU seems way too active. I found the process "natd" in the activity viewer, and it's running at a fairly consistent 80% of CPU usage. What the heck is it? I searched for it and it's parent process "launchd", but everything it came back with was a bunch of networking stuff that's over my head...

Can anyone help?

Screenshot:
http://homepage.mac.com/ltcarter47/images/natd.png

Posted on Nov 11, 2005 6:01 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 11, 2005 6:43 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

what happens if you kill or quit the process?

do you have anything in your login items? (sysprefs)

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Answer 2

Nov 11, 2005 6:45 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

It is the Network Address Translation Daemon.

It is most commonly used with ipfw to make your computer into a router or gateway.

I don't know why it is using 80% of your CPU.

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Answer 3

Nov 11, 2005 6:53 PM in response to digitaljunkie

THere's nothing out of the ordinary in startup items:
iTuneshelper
Activity Monitor
Palm Desktop Background
iCalAlarmScheduler
Mail
iTunes
Transport Monitor (for palm sync)
Coconut (network activity monitor for the dock, I've been using this for some time, so I wouldn't think this is causing it)
& iChat

I'll quit the process and see what happen right now...

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Answer 4

Nov 11, 2005 6:54 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

Network Address translation should not take 80% of your cpu cycles. I've got an old P166 with 6 computers behind it, I cant ramp it up past 15%. Also your Unix system calls should not be a negative number. How long has your machine been running?

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Answer 5

Nov 11, 2005 7:00 PM in response to claude durupt

The PowerMac has been on for a couple days I think...

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Answer 6

Nov 11, 2005 7:03 PM in response to digitaljunkie

OK, so I quit the process, everything seemed fine & the CPU usage dropped to normal, so I went to post that here and realized I had no connectivity. Network activity viewer was totally blank. Had to restart. Looking in Activity viewer again, Natd is there, but it's idle. I wonder what made it go all nuts...

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Answer 7

Nov 11, 2005 7:04 PM in response to Edwin Sneller

I do have internet sharing on, and I have ethernet running out, but nothing is connected right now, and rarely is.

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Answer 8

Nov 11, 2005 7:13 PM in response to Sean C. Carter

Well, everything seems normal still, I guess I know what to do if I see it again 😉

Thanks for everyones help!

-Sean

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