RBFS Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation Overview

The solution helps service providers conserve expensive public IPv4 addresses by enabling multiple subscribers to share a single public IPv4 address. With CGNAT, one public IPv4 address can manage hundreds of devices within the private network. It reduces the requirement of continually buying additional public IP addresses.

In addition to stretching the limited pool of public IPv4 addresses even further, CGNAT also provides significant security benefits. It helps to enhance network security by keeping the internal addressing private from the external network. It makes it difficult for attackers to target specific devices on the network by preventing attacks that target specific IP addresses.

RBFS CGNAT solution implements the functions of IPv4 address translation in the network of service providers. Service providers can deploy NAT in a way that allows multiple subscribers to share a single global IPv4 address and scale to several thousands of address translations. CGNAT operations are implemented at the forwarding plane (hardware level) to ensure optimal performance. This hardware-level implementation achieves high throughput with no performance impact and packet processing occurs without overburdening the CPU. The solution offers carrier-grade scalability with fast translation rates and a large number of IPv4 address and port number translations.

Network Address Port Translation is a dynamic NAT in which port numbers along with IP address are used to identify which traffic belongs to which private IP address. RBFS CGNAT translates the source private IPv4 address and port number to a public source IPv4 address and unique port number. This allows multiple devices with different private IP addresses to use a single public IPv4 address. The unique port number ensures that the traffic is delivered to the correct device.

The following diagrams illustrate how RBFS CGNAT works at a high level.

The diagram shows three subscribers using private IPv4 addresses (10.18.18.1, 10.18.18.2, and 10.18.18.3 send traffic to two different servers (82.6.4.1 and 82.6.4.2) on the public network.

BNG with CGNAT performs the address translation by replacing the source private IPv4 address with the public IPv4 address from the address pool and the source port number with a unique port number. After the address translation, the device forwards the traffic to the destination servers. After the translation, packets have a new source IPv4 address which is the public IPv4 and a unique port number as per the mapping in the address translation table.

CGNAT maintains a translation table with the entries. Entries are records of mapped private IPv4 addresses and port numbers with the public IPv4 addresses and port numbers.

The downstream traffic from the servers traverses to the RBFS CGNAT device. The packets coming from external hosts include the destination address as the (translated) public IPv4 address. CGNAT device performs reversal address translation for these packets as per the translation table mapping for the downstream traffic.

NAPT helps to significantly reduce the number of logs generated as it generates logs only during the allocation and release of each block of ports.

RBFS CGNAT offers support for deterministic NAT mode, which provides a consistent mapping of private IPv4 addresses with public IPv4 addresses and port ranges. This mode ensures a one-to-one mapping of private IPv4 addresses with public IPv4 addresses, allowing you to specify the private address and its matching public address and port range. The given private IPv4 address is always translated to the same public address.

In addition, deterministic NAT guarantees a predetermined and fixed translation for a given internal address with a public IPv4 and port combination, ensuring consistency and stability in the mapping. This feature is particularly useful for applications that involve security protocols, as well as for service providers who need to track subscriber sessions.

Furthermore, deterministic NAT significantly reduces address translation logs, as private IPv4 addresses are always mapped to public IPv4 addresses and port ranges.

Port mapping is a feature that allows multiple devices to share the same public IPv4 address with different port numbers. CGNAT generates a unique port number for each subscriber session. Port mapping helps to determine the correct host among the many devices in the private network that use the same public IPv4 address.

RBFS CGNAT maintains an address translation table that maps private IPv4 addresses and port numbers to their corresponding public IPv4 addresses and ports. Whenever an incoming packet arrives, CGNAT checks the translation table to see if a translation entry exists for that packet. If there’s an entry, the CGNAT replaces the source IPv4 address and port number in the packet header with the mapped public IPv4 address and port number.

When a device on the Internet sends packets downstream, the CGNAT software uses the translation table for address translation reversal. It replaces the destination public IPv4 address and port number in the packet header with the corresponding private IPv4 address and port number.

RBFS CGNAT allows Port block allocation (PBA) mode which is an address translation option. Port block size determines the number of ports allocated in a port set. Port blocks have a fixed size that include 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and 2048.

A total number of 64512 ports are available for use for a group of subscribers with the same public IPv4 address. Based on the port block size defined in the profile, the number of ports are allocated to each public IPv4 address in the pool. For example, if the block size is defined as 256, 252 ports will be available for subscribers who use the same IPv4 address.

The following table shows the port block size and available ports for a single public IPv4 address in an IPv4 pool for that block size.

Port Block Size allocation determines how many ports are assigned to individual subscribers who share the same public IPv4 address. The assigned ports are dynamically allocated to the subscribers as required. Whenever a subscriber initiates a connection, an available port from the designated block is assigned to that subscriber.

The Port Block Size that is allocated to each subscriber is determined by various factors, such as the number of subscribers sharing a single public IPv4 address and the expected volume of concurrent connections.

A NAT pool contains a range of multiple public IP addresses. You can create multiple pools and associate them with a NAT service. Pool chaining is a method in which you can associate one pool with another. For a pool, you can define 'next pool name'; so that when the pool gets exhausted with the IPv4 addresses, the next pool that is defined will take over.

Aging refers to the time that a translation entry exists or remains in the address translation table after it was last used.

The entries in the translation table have a finite lifespan as the software implements mechanisms to handle session timeouts.

When a host sends a packet to a destination, CGNAT translates the private IPv4 address and port to a public IPv4 address and port. This mapping is recorded as an entry in the address translation table. The software always looks up the translation table whenever it receives a packet to verify that any entry exists for the packet in the translation table. The software performs the address translation based on the recorded entries and its associated mappings for both inbound and outbound packets.

If there is no activity related to a specific mapping (for example, when there are no incoming or outgoing packets), the mapping will eventually be removed from the address translation table, once idle or unused entries are detected, entries removed from the address translation table to free up resources for the new upcoming traffic flows.

For TCP, idle or unused flows are typically detected by the receipt of TCP FIN-ACK packets, which indicate that both sides of the connection have finished sending data. Once detected, these flows are removed after a configurable aging timer expires.

For UDP, as it is a connectionless protocol, idle or unused flows are detected by periodically polling the flow traffic. As the number of UDP traffic flows increases, the idle flow detection mechanism also increases, ensuring that idle flows are removed in a timely manner. The aging of UDP flows is proportional to the number of traffic flows.

RBFS CGNAT provides traffic monitoring capabilities to track and log network activities. The solution offers a flexible logging mechanism that can store information such as port numbers, time, destination, and address translation details. You can enable logging for CGNAT operations.

The CGNAT-enabled RBFS devices can perform network address translation for ICMP echo request and reply messages. Subscribers can use ping command(ICMP Echo Request, Echo Reply) to check internet connectivity to external internet addresses when NAT is enabled.