Mastering pfSense

Network Address Translation

At some point, you will likely need to utilize Network Address Translation (NAT), which, as the name implies, is a way of mapping one address space into another address space. When commonly referred to, NAT is often equated with port forwarding, a form of NAT that allows a computer on a public network (such as the internet) to connect to a computer on a private network by remapping the IP address and port. In reality, however, there are two broad categories of NAT. 1:1 NAT is a form of remapping public IP addresses to private IP addresses in such a way that each public IP address corresponds to a single private IP address. One-to-many NAT, on the other hand, deals with the scenario in which there is a single public ...