How does a NAT VPS work?

Hi all,

I'm looking for someone to go provide some docs or resources about how NAT VPS(s) work and how to set them up. Couldn't find any real documentation or resources on it.

Thanks all!

start here:

https://openvz.org/Using_NAT_for_container_with_private_IPs

http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?7071-Poor-man-s-Proxmox-cluster-with-NAT

If you are setting them up yourself on a dedi you need some sort of router in front of the VPS (plural) that will route the assigned porta to the correct VPS.


Think of it like your home and your Internet connection there.


Many devices share one Internet accessible IP.


Is there anything specific you had in mind?

mikho said:

Think of it like your home and your Internet connection there.


Many devices share one Internet accessible IP.

Click to expand...

Yup, that's the definition of NAT alright!

mikho said:

If you are setting them up yourself on a dedi you need some sort of router in front of the VPS (plural) that will route the assigned porta to the correct VPS.

Click to expand...

Just to expand on that thought, the router could actually itself be a vps, and then create a virtualized network between the router and the NAT'd VPS.   That is actually exactly the concept used by CloudStack in their advanced networking setup.  Each network gets its own virtual router.  Pretty powerful and yet quite simple to setup and manage.

datarealm said:

Just to expand on that thought, the router could actually itself be a vps, and then create a virtualized network between the router and the NAT'd VPS.

Click to expand...

I did the exact same thing when I tried a VmWare failover solution where the dedi only had (and needed) one Ipv4.


A small debian in front with iptables (for internet access to some applications) and a ipsec tunnel to/from the production site.


Thanks for clarifying. I was unclear in my first writing.

There was nice post and useful knowledge thanks for sharing with us

NAT is a pain to get working especially if your used to bridging i had to do it for the first time when i switched DCs and they refused to refund me. Took me like 3 days to figure it out.

What is so hard with this? If you are setting up NAT using a VPS its very easy to do depending on what appliance or application you want to use to setup the NAT interface for your VPS. For a free solution that is easy for beginners look at untangled has a gui interface as well as ssh console for the more advance users. You can use that os to setup NAT with dhcp servers handing out private ips to your VPS.