What is NAT?

Network Address Translation (NAT) lets many private devices share a single public IP. It rewrites outbound packets so they carry the gateway's public address instead of every private address on the LAN.

When return traffic comes back, NAT remembers where to forward it based on the original request. This keeps multiple devices reachable while conserving the limited IPv4 address space.

Many NAT devices also add a security layer by hiding internal IPs from the internet, though they can sometimes make peer-to-peer connections harder without additional configuration.

IPLookup.help surfaces the public IP produced by NAT, showing the address the internet sees even though your machine itself may only have a private IP inside the routed network.