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Article: NAT's the way: network address translation means that your networked PCs can share IP addresses with other systems. And it can repel internet nasties, too.(HERE'S HOW: NETWORKING)
- Article from:
- Australian PC World
- Article date:
- July 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 IDG Communications Pty. Ltd - Australia. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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You may have come across the acronym NAT in the course of your networking travels. It stands for network address translation and describes a useful networking technology--so good, in fact, that almost all shared Internet connections employ it.
Put simply, NAT allows a network of PCs to access the Internet via a single IP address. Why should we need this? Surely there are enough IP addresses to go round?
More IPs please
Theoretically there are (count 'em) 4,294,967,296 unique IP addresses. The actual number available is somewhat smaller at about 3.3 billion, thanks to the way the addresses are separated into classes and because some are set ...