Here is a list of features appearing in a low-cost commercial gateway. Which feature is most important in order to use private IP addresses?

d) Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

c) Network address translation

b) IP layer router

a) Link layer switch

The correct answer is: c) Network address translation

Step-by-step explanation

Network Address Translation (NAT) is formulated for IP address maintenance and preservation. It permits private IP networks that employ unregistered IP addresses to connect to the internet. NAT works on a router, typically connecting two networks together, and translates the private IP addresses in the internal network into legitimate addresses before forwarding the packets to another network.

NAT can be configured to market only a single address for the entire network to the public world. This enhances additional security by constructively hiding the entire internal network behind the IP address. It provides a dual purpose of security and address preservation and is usually implemented in remote-access environments. It normally permits a single device, for example, a router, to act as a bridge between the internet and a local network or private network, which indicates that only a single unique IP address is needed to represent the whole class of computers to whatever outside their network.