I'm currently pursuing my master's degree in cybersecurity, with a bachelor's in IT, and I have a question that might be a bit niche but I'm curious about. Has anyone experienced NAT exhaustion in real-world scenarios? I assume this is more common in large enterprise environments, but I'd love to know what actually occurs when it happens and how it gets handled. Any insights would be appreciated!
1 Answer
In most organizations, I've found that Port Address Translation (PAT) is commonly used to avoid issues with NAT exhaustion. While I haven't personally witnessed NAT exhaustion, I've seen DHCP pools run out or core switches become overloaded due to overly large subnets.
I haven't seen DHCP exhaustion either, but couldn't you just add a second subnet if that ever happens? Since existing architecture might be rigid, expanding the current subnet doesn't always seem feasible.