Talk:Port address translation

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What is the difference between port forwarding and port address translation? — Omegatron 15:43, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

For the record, it's that port address translation is a method of dynamically assigning source ports from an exposed public ip for connections to a remote server from an internal private ip, whereas port forwarding forwards a destination port on a exposed public ip to an internal server on a private ip, all the time.Nimmo 15:56, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I still do not understand the distinction. I understand that port forwarding (PF) tends to be a static setup. It can be manipulated by changing firewall rules using a script. For instance, I use PF to enable my web browser at home to maintain devices on my internal work network which have web GUI interfaces. To do this I log into my firewall (Linux box with IP Tables) and run a script to add a rule to forward port 8080 of the public IP to the internal IP address of the device on port 80. When I am done, I run the script again to delete the forwarding. Is this similar to what PAT does automatically? It seems to me that with PAT, something similar goes on, but must be initiated by the device inside the private network. If that is the case, what is it used for? I need a concrete example to understand the benefit/function of PAT and understand how it differs from NAT with port forwarding. To stand alone, the PAT page needs to make this difference clear. If this isn't possible, then it should be merged with NAT as a special case. Atkinson 16:56, 01 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] improvement of PAT

give more explanation through diagram and explain it clearly with the help of table showing port address translation —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.227.32.101 (talk) 07:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC).