Site To Site VPN + PAT

There may be occasions when you have offices that are geographically separated. For example, one office is in Ontario, Canada, and another office is located in Sydney, Australia. You may also have the need for both offices to share data and services privately and securely. This can  be achieved by setting up what is known as a site-to-site virtual private network (VPN) between both locations, using the internet as a medium.

Using a VPN between both locations provides the simple benefit of being able to access data and services on your private networks, while encrypting that traffic to preserve its authenticity as it moves from one location to the other.

There are many other options available to achieve this result, yet using the omnipresent internet connection provided by the ISPs in the different geographies provides a more cost effective solution.

Setting up NAT for a small office - very easy!

NAT is known as the technology that is helping IPv4 hold on for dear life. It works by translating private IP addresses to internet routable addresses since private IP addresses are not routable on the internet. IPv4 has three classes of private IP addresses and you can find more detail about them in RFC 1918. These private IPv4 addresses are typically used for internal devices like your Servers, PCs, Laptops, Tablets, Cell Phone, Printers, etc.. For these devices to access the internet they will have to be translated to routable addresses for processing on the internet.