Network Address Translation devices (NATs) allow many computers to use the same IPv4 address. Won’t more NATs solve everything?
No. Deploying more NATs is not an adequate long-term solution. NATs can work reasonably well for certain applications, such as allowing multiple users in a small office or home network to access simple Web pages or mail services. Computers that sit behind NATs, however, do not have true end-to-end Internet connectivity. NATs complicate many “real time” and innovative Internet applications, such as Internet telephony and multimedia distribution. This can be particularly problematic for large corporate networks and users that want to run sophisticated applications, and also for those who are developing new applications. In addition, diagnosing and fixing problems on a network full of NATs is generally much harder than on a network without them. Furthermore, as the difficulty of obtaining IPv4 address space increases, it is inevitable that some sites will only support IPv6. IPv6, therefore, will be required to ensure global connectivity.
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