NAT connects private networks to the Internet while also protecting the private network resources.
To design a strategy for providing Internet connectivity by using NAT, you must:
- Establish the design requirements for a NAT solution
- Identify how the features provided by NAT support the Internet connectivity design requirements
To ensure an effective Internet-connectivity solution, you need to understand how the features of NAT support the organization's connectivity requirements.
NAT is one of the protocols supported by Routing and Remote Access in Windows® 2000; therefore, to use NAT, you must install\ the Routing and Remote Access Service (RRAS) on servers that will provide the NAT solution.
When integrating NAT into existing networks, consider that it supports automatic IP configuration of client computers that use DHCP for configuration. Computers on the internal network that are configured as DHCP clients can have their IP addressing information configured by the NAT server's DHCP Allocator.
If you choose to enable the NAT server's DHCP Allocator, you must not have any other DHCP servers on the internal network.
The non-NAT DHCP server may assign IP-address information that would prevent the DHCP client computers from properly connecting to the NAT server.
It is important to remember that NAT supports only the IP protocol, not any other routable protocols, such as Internetwork Package Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange (IPX/SPX). If you wish to access the Internet via IPX/SPX, you must use a Proxy Server to perform the protocol translation.
The next lesson will detail the protocols that are not supported by NAT.