Do I need NAT turned on?

airbornflght

Do i really need NAT turned on, I know they say it is to share a internet connection, but I've shared conections with switches and hubs that dont have NAT. Whats the point of it?

Park_7677

Yes, you need NAT. The reason your switches and hubs don't have NAT is because NAT is a Layer 3 solution to IP shortages. Switches are layer 2, and hubs are layer 1. All you're doing with the switches and hubs is creating more connections that eventually go the the Router, with NAT.

NAT takes a public IP and a private IP and translates them. If you did not have NAT enabled, your internet would not work (unless your ISP gives you more than one PUBLIC IP, then you wouldn't need a router )

Private IP ranges are not to be used on the internet, routers will not route them. If you tried to use your 192.168.x.x IP it would not make it anywhere because A) it's a different network than your ISP (192.168.x.x vs 72.3.44.x for example) and B) if a router (not yours) received a packet from 192.168.x.x it would drop it instantly. That's why you need NAT to translate your 192.168.x.x to the public IP your ISP gives you.

Leave NAT on, you need it. Wikipedia - Network Address Translation

airbornflght

Ok, I see that. so what exactly does a switch do to share the connection, I am guess that it just shares the same ip? Doesnt really matter, I was just trying to get bit torrent to run correctly and I finaly persuaded my router to forward the port, after about 3 resets and finaly flashing the firmware. Now its all working, and ive been pulling 250KB/s through one torrent, so much nicer than the 3KB/s I was getting. Im kind of mad, because one of my torrents had a bad block, so it was pretty much fubar'd.

I figured that I needed it, but I was just wondering why my switch didnt have it. guess I know now.