NAT Overload (PAT) Configuration

The static and dynamic NAT configurations matter, but the NAT overload (PAT) configuration in this section matters more. This is the feature that saves public IPv4 addresses and prolonged IPv4’s life.

NAT overload, as mentioned earlier, allows NAT to support many inside local IP addresses with only one or a few inside global IP addresses. By essentially translating the private IP address and port number to a single inside global address, but with a unique port number, NAT can support many (over 65,000) private hosts with only a single public, global address.

Two variations of PAT configuration exist in IOS. If PAT uses a pool of inside global addresses, the configuration looks exactly like dynamic NAT, except ...

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