Week 8 - BSIT220 - NAT64

I wondered what might happen to NAT now that IPv6 is quickly replacing IPv4. The book mentioned NAT64 as the new version but it doesn't work that same. Instead, it is a mechanism for IPv4 to IPv6 transition and coexistence. Its primary purpose is to allow an IPv6 client to initiate communications with an IPv4 server and vice-versa.

So far it's one of only a few methods that set up this type of communication. The benefits are that older applications running on IPv4 will still be used even during and after the transition so they will need to be accessed somehow and then vice versa when the application is on IPv6 and IPv4 devices will need to connect to them.

It works by binding the IPv6 port and address to an IPv4 port and address and creates a mapping so that they can communicate

There are two types of NAT64 translation:

Stateless NAT64 - the state is not preserved, which means for every IPv6 user a dedicated IPv4 address is required. 

This type won't be in use that often until after a larger amount of devices have transferred over.

Stateful NAT64 - in this type, the states are maintained. A single IP address is used for all of the private users with different port numbers.