what is natting?

Answer 1

In computer networking, network address translation (NAT, also known as network masquerading or IP-masquerading) is a technique in which the source and/or destination addresses of IP packets are rewritten as they pass through a router or firewall. It is most commonly used to enable multiple hosts on a private network to access the Internet using a single public IP address. According to specifications, routers should not act in this way, but it is a convenient and widely-used technique. How is this accomplished? Well basically the router keeps track of outgoing IP addresses and ports. It will take an internal ip address, say 192.168.1.5 and the port it uses for webtraffic say 8080 and translate that when it goes through the router to a public ip address, for example 66.234.23.2, and rewrites the packets source port to a virtual port like 98080. Destination port stays the same. packet goes to destination, returns to your router. Your router goes. I remember the source ip for that connection was 192.168.1.5, then rewrites the destination port from 98080 back to 8080. This is why it's called Network Address Translation, or natting, because the router is continuously keeping track of source, ip and ports, to public, ip and ports via a translation table.

Answer 2

NAT, or Network Address Translation, is a method by which one "real" IP Address (usually assigned to a router or other networking device) is shared by many computers. The computers are each assigned an "internal" IP, which is not visible outside of their linked network.

NAT devices (such as routers) take the data coming from the inside IP addresses, and send it out to the outside address. In turn, they then take incoming data and re-route it to the computer that requested it within the network.

NAT allows you to gain a higher level of security, since in theory nothing can get into the network unless a computer inside the network requests it, but there are ways around this, so beware.