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Chapter 11
Scaling IP Addresses
IP is the connectivity protocol of choice. IP applications are being developed quickly,
meaning that more hosts can potentially be connected to the Internet. In the early stages of
the Internet, PCs, workstations, servers, and routers were the only devices attached to the
Internet. IP addresses were statically assigned by an administrator.
Today, PDAs, laptops, desktops, mainframes, storage devices, routers, switches, video
game consoles, and security cameras connect to the Internet. There is talk of even
connecting household appliances. It should be clear that without scaling options, the
Internet revolution would quickly reach its limits.
This chapter presents solutions to the IP scaling problem: NAT, DHCP, and RFC 1918.
Concept Questions

Demonstrate your knowledge of these concepts by answering the following questions in

the space provided.
1. Describe why scaling IP addresses is necessary.

Two scalability challenges facing the Internet today are:

• The depletion of registered IP address space and the ever-increasing size of the Internet.

• As the Internet gets bigger, so does the number of IP routes in the backbone Internet
routing tables. This poses a scalability problem for routing algorithms.

2. Describe NAT terminology and features.

Network Address Translation (NAT) is a mechanism for conserving registered IP addresses in large
networks and simplifying IP addressing management tasks. NAT is standards based and is
described in RFC 1631.

As a packet is routed across a Cisco IOS NAT router, the router translates the source IP address on
the packet from a private internal network address to a legal IP address so that the packet can be
transported over public external networks, such as the Internet. Returning traffic is translated back
for delivery within the inside network. NAT will be discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

3. Describe the difference between static NAT, dynamic NAT, and PAT.

PAT uses unique source port numbers on the inside global IP address to distinguish between
translations. Because the port number is encoded in 16 bits, the total number of internal addresses
that can be translated using NAT to one external address could theoretically be as high as 65,536
per IP address. PAT will attempt to preserve the original source port. If this source port is already
allocated, PAT will attempt to find the first available port number starting from the beginning of
the appropriate port group 0-511, 512-1023, or 1024-65535. If there is still no port available from
the appropriate port group and more than one external IP address is configured, PAT will move to
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the next IP address and try to allocate the original source port again. This continues until it runs
out of available ports and external IP addresses.

Dynamic NAT is designed to map an unregistered IP address to a registered IP address from a

group of registered IP addresses. Most internal hosts fall into this category. When a host requires a
global address to access the Internet, it does not need a specific address, rather anyone from the
pool that is publicly known. But what happens if there are not enough public addresses for private
hosts that want to access the Internet. Overloading is a form of dynamic NAT that maps multiple
unregistered IP addresses to a single registered IP address (many-to-one) by using different ports,
known also as port address translation (PAT).

Static NAT works in much the same principles as dynamic NAT in that it provides a means to
shield private IP address from the outside public in order for increased security. However in a
Static NAT scenario there is a direct one-to-one address mapping between the private NAT address
and public IP addresses. Static NAT is useful in situations in which a host within the Network
needs to be identified by outside public users like a web server for example.

4. Describe the difference between BootP and DHCP.

The Internet community first developed a protocol called BOOTP, which was used for configuring
diskless clients on a network. BOOTP was originally defined in RFC 951 in 1985. It is the
predecessor of DHCP, and it shares some operational characteristics. Both protocols are client-
server based, using UDP ports 67 and 68, which are well known as BOOTP ports because BOOTP
came before DHCP.

BOOTP provides the basic four IP parameters already mentioned. However, BOOTP is not
dynamic. When a client requests an IP address, the BOOTP server searches a predefined table for
an entry that matches the clients MAC address. If an entry exists, then the corresponding IP
address for that entry is returned to the client. This means that the binding between the MAC
address and the IP address must have already been configured in the BOOTP server.

There are two primary differences between DHCP and BOOTP:

1. DHCP defines mechanisms through which clients can be assigned an IP address for a finite
lease period, allowing for reassignment of the IP address to another client later, or for the
client to get another assignment, if the client moves to another subnet. Clients may renew
leases and keep the same IP address.

2. DHCP provides the mechanism for a client to gather other IP configuration parameters
(WINS, domain name) it needs to operate in the TCP/IP network. Table 11-7 provides a
summary.

Vocabulary Exercise

Define the following terms as completely as you can. Use the online curriculum or Chapter
11 of the Cisco Networking Academy Program CCNA 3 and 4 Companion Guide for help.
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Bootstrap - A simple, preset operation to load instructions that in turn cause other instructions to
be loaded into memory, or cause entry into other configuration modes.

Bootstrap Protocol (BOOTP) - A protocol used by a network node to deter-mine the IP address
of its Ethernet interfaces to affect network booting.

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.

Provides a mechanism for allocating IP addresses dynamically so that addresses automatically can
be reused when hosts no longer need them.

inside global address – In a NAT configuration, the inside global address is the ip address that the
inside local address gets translated to.

inside local address – In a NAT configuration, the inside local address is the ip address that gets
translated.

Network Address Translation (NAT)- Network Address Translation. A mechanism for translating
private addresses into publically usable addresses to be used within the public Internet. An effective
means for hiding actual device addressing within a private network.

outside global address - The IP address of an outside host as it is known to the hosts in the inside
network

outside local address - The IP address assigned to a host on the outside network by the host's
owner.

overloading – Port Address Translation or PAT uses tcp port numbers to allow a group of inside
hosts to communicate to outside hosts and ‘share’ the overloaded address in a NAT configuration.
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CCNA Exam Review Questions

The following questions help you review for the CCNA exam. The answers appear in
Appendix A, “Answers to CCNA Exam Review Questions.”
1. Who or what assigns private addresses?

A. The network administrator from RFC 1918

B. American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)
C. Réseaux IP Européennes (RIPE)
D. Any address can be a private address
2. Which of the following are valid RFC 1918 private addresses?
(Choose all that apply.)

A. 10.0.0.0/8
B. 192.168.0.0/16
C. 172.16.0.0/12
D. All of the above
3. The BOX company maintains its own public web server, and it is
about to implement NAT. Which type of NAT will be used for the web server?

A. Dynamic
B. Static
C. PAT
D. No NAT at all
4. Which type of NAT will be used for the CEO workstation in the BOX
company?

A. Dynamic
B. Static
C. PAT
D. No NAT at all
5. Which of the following applications does Cisco IOS NAT support?
(Choose all that apply.)

A. ICMP
B. DNS zone transfers
C. BootP
D. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) (including PORT and PASV)
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6. Which of the following traffic types does Cisco IOS NAT not support?
(Choose all that apply.)

A. ICMP
B. DNS zone transfers
C. BootP
D. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) (including PORT and PASV)
7. BootP supports _________________, and DHCP supports
________________.

A. Static mapping, dynamic mapping

B. PAT, NAT
C. RTP, PAT
D. NAT, DHCP
8. What is the order of DHCP messages?

A. DHCPACK, DHCPOFFER, DHCPREQUEST,

DHCPDISCOVER
B. DHCPREQUEST, DHCPACK, DHCPDISCOVER,
DHCPOFFER
C. DHCPOFFER, DHCPDISCOVER, DHCPREQUEST,
DHCPACK
D. DHCPDISCOVER, DHCPOFFER, DHCPREQUEST,
DHCPACK