What is NAT?

[Dwarner]

Hello everyone,
I have just done some basic things in networking, so I am not having much idea about it. I have been told to take out an information about the NAT which is related to the networking. Before this I never heard about the NAT. So I thought to take some help from you guys!! Please tell me what is NAT and why it is so important.?? Hope that some members will reply me soon.!!

[Steinbach]

Network Address Translation (NAT) is the process of converting an Internet Protocol address to another Internet protocol address. Simply, it is the process of mapping an IP address to another. The number of IP addresses on the Internet is limited. A router will help reduce these addresses. Indeed, it will use computers that will have specific addresses on the local network and will use a NAT gateway, which has an IP address visible on the Internet, sending packets on the web. The NAT server can therefore hide ip address while forwarding packets from the network to this server. With this method, an IP address visible on the internet may correspond to several computers that will use a router and a NAT server.

[Twitter]

Many times the question arises that why we need NAT and map one IP to another? The answer is a bit much. But we know that the growing popularity of Internet today, it is difficult to assign unique IP addresses to all computers connected to the Internet. Growth of large companies shows thousands of computers in business is nothing and with many thousands of networks of thousands of computers are available. Can provide the address for all computers in these kinds of large companies? No, if the idea of NAT invented.

[Larry ward]

Using the concept of Network Address Translation (NAT), you can easily assign Internet protocol address to all computers in large companies by spending some real addresses. Before explaining that we need to know the concept of private and public IP address IP address. Private IP is a set of addresses that is used to connect to the Internet. The private address ranges of Internet Protocol are described below :

10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255

172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255

192.168.0.0 to 192,168,255,255

[Techno01]

The computers in business and a local network are processed using private addresses. But by using private IP addresses can not access the Internet. Thus, the company must buy a set of public IP addresses and using NAT, they convert the private IP address valid public Internet protocol address. Thus, we can avoid the headache of assigning unique IP addresses to all computers in the business. To implement it, we lose the Internet Protocol addresses private, but we can use the same set of private IP addresses to computers on a network different company. So NAT address and the concept of private Internet protocol helps to make better use of the Internet Protocol address.

[Techguru01]

The following are the types of NAT :

• Static NAT
• Dynamic NAT
• Port Address Translation (PAT)

In a static address NAT unregistered (private) associated with that IP is registered (public) Internet Protocol address. This type of mapping is pre-defined one. Dynamic NAT in a pool of public addresses Internet Protocol is shared by a set of private IP subnet. This mapping is not predetermined, but it is dynamic.In Port address translation (PAT) internet multiple unregistered IP addresses to map to a unique IP address recorded by the various TCP / UDP port numbers.