A Quick Look at NAT64 and NAT46
Introduction
In the best of worlds we would all be using native IPv6 now, or at least dual
stack. That is not the case however and IPv4 will be around for a long time yet.
During that time that both protocols exist, there will be a need to translate
between the two, like it or not.
Different Types of NAT
Before we begin, let’s define some different forms of NAT:
NAT44 – NAT from IPv4 to IPv4
NAT66 – NAT from IPv6 to IPv6
NAT46 – NAT from IPv4 to IPv6
NAT64 – NAT from IPv6 to IPv4
The most commonly used type is definitely NAT44 but here we will focus on translating
between IPv4 and IPv6.
NAT64
There are two different forms of NAT64, stateless and statefull. The stateless version
maps the IPv4 address into an IPv6 prefix. As the name implies, it keeps no state.
It does not save any IP addresses since every v4 address maps to one v6 address.
Here is a comparison of stateless and statefull NAT64:
DNS64
When resolving names to numbers in IPv4, A records are used. When doing the same
in IPv6, AAAA records are used. When using NAT64, the device doing Continue reading