NATs (Network Address Translators) Henning Schulzrinne Dept. of Computer Science Columbia University Fall 2003
NATs Network address translation = local, LAN-specific address space translated to small number of globally routable IP addresses Motivation: scarce address space cost: about $9k/year for up to 262,000 addresses prevent home broadband users from running servers at home security: prevent unsolicited inbound requests avoid renumbering if provider changes most small/mid-sized LANs inherit address space from ISP
Prevalence of NATs Claim: 50% of broadband users are behind NATs All Linksys/D-Link/Netgear home routers are NATs Measurement: for Quake III users, about 17-25% using NAT (May/June 2001)
NAT details RFC 1631 (first description) RFC 1918 (private-use addresses) RFC 2663 RFC 2776 RFC 3022 RFC 3027 RFC 3235 RFC 3424 RFC 3489 (STUN)
NAT types All use net-10/8 (10.*.*.*) or 192.168/16 (172.16/12 also available) Address translation Address-and-port translation (NAPT) most common form today, still called NAT one external (global) IP address