Overview

The Internet faces the challenge of conserving IP address space while continuing to provide scalability in routing. Network Address Translation (NAT) helps to address these challenges by allowing the conservation of registered IP addresses within private networks and simplifying IP addressing management tasks through a form of transparent routing.

NAT allows you to translate IP addresses between two address realms (for example, between an intranet network that uses private, not publicly routable addresses and the Internet or between two overlapping, private networks). On receiving incoming traffic, the IP addresses are translated back for delivery within the private network.

Using NAT at the edge of your intranet provides the following advantages:

• Allows unregistered "private" addresses to connect to the Internet by translating those addresses into globally registered IP addresses
• Increases network privacy by hiding internal IP addresses from external networks