SNAT and DNAT

Thoth_Dhwty

Hello,

So I am a little bit confused as some study material define SNAT and DNAT as Source/Destination NAT while other study material define SNAT and DNAT as Static/Dynamic NAT.

Which one is correct ?

hurricane1091

Thoth_Dhwty wrote: »

Hello,

So I am a little bit confused as some study material define SNAT and DNAT as Source/Destination NAT while other study material define SNAT and DNAT as Static/Dynamic NAT.

Which one is correct ?

Source NAT is changing the source IP. When you do a static NAT, dynamic NAT, or PAT you are probably only doing a source NAT. As in, you and translating the internal private IP address to one of the organization's public IP addresses.

Destination NAT is when you change the destination IP address. I think a good example would be if you had a VPN with another company, and tried to hit their public IP address. They may do a destination NAT at that point to send the traffic to the internal server, which has a private IP address. The return traffic from the server back to you would have a source NAT done by the other organization before returning to you.

Does that help?

Edit: You can also do a source AND destination NAT at the same time, but I wouldn't worry about that. Just realize that all 4 things you asked about are different.