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Article: To be or NAT to be?(network address translation)
- Article from:
- Communications News
- Article date:
- September 1, 2001
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 Nelson Publishing. 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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Network address translation is both vital and problematic.
Network address translation (NAT) technology has been critical to the growth of IP networking over the past decade. NAT allows organizations to create large, well-organized IP numbering systems behind their firewalls, despite a dearth of available public IP addresses. The limited number of public IP addresses that the organization possesses can then be used only for public servers and/or active IP sessions with the outside world.
In addition to allowing companies to conserve their public IP address supply, NAT also shields working internal IP-addressing structure from prying eyes. That's an ...