NAT Overview

This section provides an overview of NAT configuration. A traditional NAT configuration is made up of a private network or intranet, a public network, and a router that interconnects the two networks. The private network is made up of one or more devices each assigned an inside (internal) address that is not intended to be directly connectable to a public network device. The router interconnecting the private and public networks support traditional NAT. It is NAT‘s responsibility to translate the inside address to a unique outside address to facilitate communication with the public network for intranet devices.

NAT allows translations between IP addresses. NAPT allows translations between multiple inside addresses and their associated ports and a single outside IP address and its associated ports. NAT and NAPT support both static and dynamic address translation.