Network Prefix Translation (NPt) allows us to map an internal IPv6 prefix to an external IPv6 prefix. Normally, we try to avoid using NAT when we use IPv6, but there are some cases where being able to translate IPv6 prefixes is helpful:
- It provides a means of implementing multihoming (connecting a host or network to multiple networks) on small networks. Another method is DHCPv6.
- It potentially makes routing more efficient, as it makes addresses on edge networks independent of addresses on upstream networks, and the upstream networks can then work only with the contiguous ISP-allocated addresses, which will make route summarization easier (and our routing tables much smaller).
NPt functions similarly to 1:1 NAT ...
