New Q/A: What is Network Address Translation (NAT)?

[Will.Spencer]

I just added What is Network Address Translation (NAT)?

The topic is enormous and I wanted to keep the description simple and straightforward.

I may have to make several other suppporting pages to help this one make sense to the unitiated.

[brian bradshaw]

I just added What is Network Address Translation (NAT)?

Think of it as representing or alias. A unadvertised private address associated or translated a advertised address (a method of re-presentation). NAT is primarily used in the world of Internet networking to allow a user with an address not propagated over the Internet (192.168.x.x, 172.??.x.x and 10.x.x.x) to traverse with and accepted Internet address by was of masquerading. (see RFC1918) This of course is one use for NAT. ie (To the world wide network I am 200.200.200.200 where my private Intranet address is actually 192.168.1.1).

Now the PAT well that is similar but another discussion.

Hope this helps.