Exploring IPv6 Address Space and NAT's Role in Secure Networking

Internet: Love it or hate it, Network Address Translation will not be going away soon. It is a common belief that IP addresses are running out. Every device on a network needs to be uniquely identified by its IP address, and the problem is that there are simply not enough IPv4 addresses.

The key advantage of IPv6 is that its addresses are 128 bits in length, as opposed to the 32-bit length of IPv4 addresses. This results in a huge number of IP addresses. The big question is are we really running out of IPv4 addresses? If so, IPv6 is certainly a reasonable solution. But thanks to Network Address Translation (Nat), IPv4 addresses are, in fact, far from depleted. Nat offers the ability to share a single public, globally routable IP address among many internet hosts. This is valuable in the IPv4 world, where public IP addresses are, by necessity, conserved.

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