It's PAT not NAT

February 15, 2005

“Network address translation (NAT, also known as network masquerading or IP-masquerading) is a technique in which the source and/or destination addresses of IP packets are rewritten as they pass through a router or firewall.”

Except 99.999% of what people think is NAT is really PAT. If you only have a single public (external) IP address with several internal computers using it you are using Port Address Translation (PAT). If you have multiple public IP addresses and each internal computer is mapped to an external IP address then you are using Network Address Translation (NAT).
Everytime someone says NAT I have to bite my tongue. I know it is a minor technicality but they are two different things. It’s like referring to LVS as a cluster.
Okay I feel better now that I have vented.

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