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Concept Explainer · Enterprise IT & Networks

NAT vs. PAT — Why One Public IP Can Serve an Entire Office Network

Translating addresses alone still costs one public IP per device. Adding port numbers is what lets hundreds of them share just one.

"NAT" gets used as a catch-all term for how a router lets a private network reach the internet, but the router in your office or your home almost certainly isn't running the mechanism the name literally describes. Basic Network Address Translation — one private IP rewritten to one public IP — still needs roughly as many public addresses as it has devices. The thing that actually lets an entire building share a single public IP is a more specific mechanism, Port Address Translation, and the difference between the two is not just naming trivia — it's the whole reason IPv4 hasn't run out for home and office networks the way the raw math of a 32-bit address space would suggest it should have.