NAT Benefits for Current
Users of IP

"We Never Planned to Connect"

IP makes such good sense, whether you ever connect to the Internet or not. As few as three years ago, most companies proudly stated that they would never connect to the Internet, due to the security concerns. Now that a connection is almost required, they have a problem. Because they never planned to connect to the Internet, they didn't use registered addresses. Now that they have to connect, they will need to change every address on every computer to something legitimate. This may take months to accomplish, at great expense.

Not with our NAT!

Our NAT products conceal your internal IP Addresses from the outside world, by substituting a registered IP Address into each message going out into the Internet. That registered address is loaned to you by your Internet Service Provider, and may change if you change providers. The NAT keeps track of the actual internal address of the requesting computer, and restores the actual address in the response when it comes back. Nobody knows that you are using unregistered IP Addresses. The only thing that won't work is communicating with the real owner of your addresses.

You're a Hero

Before our NATs were available, the administrators that used unregistered IP Addresses were ridiculed by the networking world. It was deemed unprofessional not to apply for your own network. Now we know that it is unprofessional and irresponsible to demand a huge block of addresses when one address will do. How does it work? Read on for the short answer, or follow this link to the complete techie details?

Network Address Translation
The Short Answer

Each of our NAT products acts like an IP router. The Internet Service Provider allocates an IP Address from his assigned numbers to the ISP's side of the NAT. On "the other side" of the NAT (the user side), almost any IP Addresses may be used. If you have "someone else's" IP Addresses, even these will work most times.

When a user computer on the "inside" sends a message to the outside world via the NAT, the NAT keeps track of the actual "inside" address of that computer, but substitutes the assigned "outside" address into the message before it is sent into the Internet. When a reply comes back from the outside, the NAT restores the actual address before sending the reply to the user computer.

There are cases that get more complicated than this, and if you are interested, you should read the complete techie details.

Internet Security

We're all concerned about security, and our NAT helps you here. Only messages that exactly match a connection are permitted in from the Internet. This means that only messages that are in response to your requests may enter your Intranet, unless you explicitly allow them. Competing NATs that provide a simple mapping of IP Addresses may unintentionally give the hacker a window into your Intranet.

This page was last modified on April 18, 1996.

This information is proprietary to Network Safety. Network Safety, WebElite and NetNAT are trademarks of Network Safety. For information on our products and services, please contact our sales department. This page was prepared using WebElite, our professional editor for the Web.