What Nat Does; How Nat Works - ZyXEL Communications Prestige 314 PLUS User Manual

Prestige 314 PLUS Broadband Sharing Gateway with 4-Port Switch
NAT never changes the IP address (either local or global) of an outside host.

4.1.2 What NAT Does

In the simplest form, NAT changes the source IP address in a packet received from a subscriber (the inside
local address) to another (the inside global address) before forwarding the packet to the WAN side. When the
response comes back, NAT translates the destination address (the inside global address) back the inside local
address before forwarding it to the original inside host. Note that the IP address (either local or global) of an
outside host is never changed.
The global IP addresses for the inside hosts can be either static or dynamically assigned by the ISP. In
addition, you can designate servers, e.g., a web server and a telnet server, on your local network and make
them accessible to the outside world. If you do not define any servers (for Many-to-One and Many-to-Many
Overload mapping – see Table 4-2), NAT offers the additional benefit of firewall protection. If no server is
defined in these cases, all incoming inquiries will be filtered out by your Prestige, thus preventing intruders
from probing your network. For more information on IP address translation, refer to RFC 1631, The IP
Network Address Translator (NAT).

4.1.3 How NAT Works

Each packet has two addresses – a source address and a destination address. For outgoing packets, the ILA
(Inside Local Address) is the source address on the LAN, and the IGA (Inside Global Address) is the source
address on the WAN. For incoming packets, the ILA is the destination address on the LAN, and the IGA is
the destination address on the WAN. NAT maps private (local) IP addresses to globally unique ones required
for communication with hosts on other networks. It replaces the original IP source address (and TCP or UDP
source port numbers for Many-to-One and Many-to-Many Overload NAT mapping) in each packet and then
forwards it to the Internet. The Prestige keeps track of the original addresses and port numbers so incoming
reply packets can have their original values restored. The following figure illustrates this.
4-2 NAT