The internet was designed for every device to have a unique public IP. That assumption broke when IPv4 addresses started running out.
Network Address Translation (NAT) emerged as the solution. It lets thousands of devices share a single public IP.
In this section, I'll cover:
- Private vs public IP addresses and RFC 1918 ranges
- How NAT translates addresses between networks
- Static NAT, Dynamic NAT, and PAT
- NAT terminology and translation tables
- Advantages, disadvantages, and troubleshooting