Chapter 12 Network Address Translation (NAT)

Global/Local

Global/local denotes the IP address of a host in a packet as the packet traverses a router, for example, the local address refers to the IP address of a host when the packet is in the local network, while the global address refers to the IP address of the host when the same packet is traveling in the WAN side.

NAT

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 to the inside local address before forwarding it to the original inside host.

Port Forwarding

A port forwarding set is a list of inside (behind NAT on the LAN) servers, for example, web or FTP, that you can make visible to the outside world even though NAT makes your whole inside network appear as a single computer to the outside world.

Finding Out More

See Section 12.8 on page 187 for advanced technical information on NAT.

12.2 The Port Forwarding Screen

Use the Port Forwarding screen to forward incoming service requests to the server(s) on your local network.

You may enter a single port number or a range of port numbers to be forwarded, and the local IP address of the desired server. The port number identifies a service; for example, web service is on port 80 and FTP on port 21. In some cases, such as for unknown services or where one server can support more than one service (for example both FTP and web service), it might be better to specify a range of port numbers. You can allocate a server IP address that corresponds to a port or a range of ports.

The most often used port numbers and services are shown in Appendix E on page 381. Please refer to RFC 1700 for further information about port numbers.

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VSG1432-B101 Series User’s Guide