Solaris 8 Security

Network/Port Address Translation (NAT/PAT)

Network Address Translation and/or Port Address Translation is a relatively complex technique used for several purposes in TCP/IP networks. These purposes include conservation and reusability of IP address space, reconfiguration of large networks, load balancing, network security, and remote branch/small office connectivity, among others. All these are achieved using modification of IP packets traveling back and forth between network nodes. NAT/PAT gateways look at the combination of protocol, source and destination addresses, and ports, and in their translation table, to see how a particular packet should be modified (or rewritten, in NAT/PAT terminology). This table is either manually created by the ...