How Does Nat Work; Symmetrical Rtp; Signalling Sip - Snom 4S NAT Filter Admin Manual

2.2.1 How does NAT work?

NAT is essentially a translation table that maps public IP address
and ports combinations to private IP address and port combinations.
The translation table is implicitly set up when a packet is sent
from the private network to the public network. The association is kept
alive for a certain time and is refreshed every time a new packet is sent
from the same origin. This fact is used by STUN (RFC3489) to set up an
association between a public IP address and a private IP address.
In symmetrical NAT, the router stores the address where the
packet was sent. Only packets coming from this address are forwarded
back to the private address. This algorithm increases the security as it is
harder to guess the source IP and port for attackers. Full cone NAT does
not perform this check.
There are some mixed variants between full cone NAT and
symmetrical NAT. Restricted port NAT works similar like symmetrical NAT,
but uses only one port association.
Hairpinning is the ability of the NAT to route packets coming from
the private network addressed towards a public IP address binding back
to the private network. Not all routers are supporting this feature.

2.2.2 Symmetrical RTP

The real time protocol (RTP) is used to transport media.
Symmetrical RTP is a trick to extend the number of cases when
communication can be established. A SIP user agent that supports
symmetrical RTP waits for the first RTP packet coming in and then sends
its media stream back to the IP address from which it received that packet.
Symmetrical RTP works always if the user agent that does symmetrical
RTP is on a globally routable address. However, this algorithm can easily
be cheated (port spraying) and therefore implies a certain security risk.

2.2.3 Signalling SIP

SIP traffic is relatively unproblematic because SIP typically is not
as time critical as media. Usually, it is ok to route SIP packets through a
longer path than media.
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