Introduction to Network Address Translation (NAT)

Network Address Translation (NAT) was introduced into networking for a similar purpose like the
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR). It was originally introduced to reduce the depletion of available
IP addressing spaces in the internal network by mapping large internal network addresses to smaller
public IP addresses. In this vein, NAT has been useful tool for network migration and mergers, server
load sharing and creating of virtual servers.

List of Situation to Use NAT

i. Connecting to the internet when your host do not have a global unique IP address
ii. Changing an ISP that requires the renumbering of internal network addresses
iii. Merging two intranets with duplicated IP addresses

In this section, we would consider the basic functionality of NAT and the common terminologies that are
related to NAT.

Functions of NAT

i. It decreases the amount of public IP addresses in your networking environment.

ii. It makes it easy for Companies with two similar internal network addressing scheme to merge
iii. It helps the organization to change the ISP without necessarily changing the internal IP
Addressing Scheme.

In figure 1, the NAT device's public IP address is 145.12.131.7 while the private IP addresses are in the
range 192.168.X.X. This range of private IP addresses is one of three common ranges:

Class A: 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255/8

Class B: 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255/12
Class C: 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255/16

Advantages of NAT

i. It conserves legally registered address

ii. It reduces address overlap occurrences
iii. It increases the flexibility of connecting to the internet
 iv. It eliminates the internal address renumbering as the network changes

Disadvantages of NAT

i. The address translation causes delays in path switching

ii. It causes loss of end to end IP address traceability thus making it difficult to trace the source of IP
addresses on the global network.
iii. It makes certain applications to malfunction or impossible to work on the network.

Types of NAT

We shall basically consider three types of NAT. They are the Static NAT, the Dynamic NAT and the
Overloading NAT or the Port Address Translation (PAT).

Static NAT – This type of NAT is designed to have one –to – one mapping where the Network
Administrator would have to mapping each local IP address to a global IP address. In this type, there must
be real internet connection or Internet IP for each local address.

Dynamic NAT – with this type of NAT, the administrator defines a pool of unregistered Local IP
addresses that would be mapped to a pool of registered IP addresses. This would be assigned dynamically
as the pool is defined. The router on which the NAT is enabled does the assignment. In this type, all host
sending or receiving packets from the internet would be assigned a real IP addresses automatically.

Overload NAT – this is the most used type of NAT. It is a type of dynamic NAT that maps multiple
unregistered IP address to a single registered address – many –to-one using different ports. It is also
known as Port Address Translation (PAT). This type (Overload NAT) enables an administrator to map a
block of IPs in the Network or the whole Network to a single registered to allow thousands of users to
connect to the internet using only one real global IP address.

NAT Names
Every subject comes with its own terminology. It is not different from NAT. Addresses used after NAT
translations are called global addresses. These are usually the public addresses used to access the internet.
Remember that these addresses are not needed when we are not accessing the internet.

The IPs assigned by the network administrator is called local addresses. These are ones before the
translation and it represent the private local host addresses. The outside local address is the address of the
destination host usually a public address of the server in the local network that has the ability to send or
receive packets over the internet. After translation, the inside local address is then called the inside global
address and the outside global address then becomes the name of the destination host.

The terminologies are summarized

Name meaning
Inside local Name of the inside source address before translation
Outside local Name of the destination host before translation
Inside global Name of the inside host after translation
Outside global Name of the outside destination host after translation
NAT Overloading example

Packet InterNet Groper (ping) Uses an Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP)
echo request and replies to test if a host IP stack is initialized and alive on the network.
traceroute displays the list of routers on a path to a network destination by using TTL
time-outs and ICMP error messages. This command will not work from a DOS prompt.
tracert Same command as traceroute, but it’s a Microsoft Windows command and will
not work on other devices, like a Cisco router or Unix box.
arp -a Displays IP-to-MAC-address mappings on a Windows PC.
ipconfig /all Used only from a DOS prompt. Shows you the PC network configuration