NAT is short for Network Address Translation, and provides a way for an embedded system to translate the IP addresses used by the TCP/IP stack. This means that several computers in a network can share one globally unique IP address, which is translated to local addresses by means of NAT. Embedded NAT does not only reduce the requirement for globally unique IP addresses, but also introduces other advantages such as network management simplification and network security enhancements.

Since the number of devices connected to the Internet has grown rapidly over the past few years, network managers today have to face problems the original designers probably never considered when they first developed the TCP/IP protocol in the 70's. One of the emerging problems is the lack of unique IP addresses. The Internet protocol in its current version theoretically limits the number of connected hosts to 4 billion, but the practical limit is much less. In fact, shortage in the Internet address space was one of the reasons to why a complete redesign of the protocol was started, known as IPv6.

Green Hills Software NAT is optimized for deployment in embedded systems, and delivered in ANSI compliant C source code and is integrated with u-velOSity kernel, the velOSity real-time operating system, INTEGRITY real-time operating system, INTEGRITY-178B and MULTI development environment.

• The IP Network Address Translator (NAT) [RFC-1631].
• IP Network Address Translator (NAT) Terminology and Considerations [RFC-2663].
• Supports Traditional (Outbound) NAT.
• Supports Network Address Port Translation (NAPT).
• Supports Two-Way NAT.
• Supports multiple internal and external interfaces.
• High performance.
• Delivered in ANSI compliant 'C' source code.
• Complete ready-to-run INTEGRITY and VelOSity RTOS integration with examples, makefiles etc.
  

» Back to Network Communications