What Is Network Address Port Translation (NAPT)?

The NAPT protocol is like a Swiss Army knife for the networking world. It is a tool that enables you to carry out all your responsibilities fastest and most effectively. Assume for a moment that you are a network engineer who is tasked with the responsibility of connecting two distinct groups of computers. You could use an IP address, but if you did that, it would be difficult for your users to keep track of the destination they are headed to when they connect to something. You could also use a name, but it may be difficult for your users to keep track of which names were associated with which addresses if you did so. This issue can be remedied by using NAPT, which allows users to map numerous internal IP addresses to a single external IP address. You only need to commit the number of the external port to memory instead of remembering the IP address and port number for each computer part of your network. The most excellent aspect is that you don't have to modify how people communicate with one another for this to be successful; it works regardless of whether or not people are using TCP or UDP. NAPT associates the Transmission Control Protocol/User Datagram Protocol (TCP/UDP) port numbers and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of local devices with registered, public IP addresses and the TCP/UDP ports that belong to those IP addresses. The connection of more than one internal host with external networks or the Internet is made possible by NAPT's usage of the same public IP address as the external network or Internet. Imagine you have two computers, one at home and one at work, but they are connected to the Internet using a single IP address. If you want to grasp what that implies in words that are more understandable to the average person, think of this: That's pretty much what NAT is taking care of for you.