NAT64

IPv6 transition mechanisms
Standards Track
Experimental
Informational
Drafts
Deprecated

NAT64 is an IPv6 transition mechanism that facilitates communication between IPv6 and IPv4 hosts by using a form of network address translation (NAT). The NAT64 gateway is a translator between IPv4 and IPv6 protocols,[1] for which function it needs at least one IPv4 address and an IPv6 network segment comprising a 32-bit address space. The "well-known prefix" reserved for this service is 64:ff9b::/96.

An IPv6 client embeds the IPv4 address it wishes to communicate with using the host part of the IPv6 network segment, resulting in an IPv4-embedded IPv6 addresses (hence the 32-bit address space in the IPv6 network segment), and sends packets to the resulting address. The NAT64 gateway creates a mapping between the IPv6 and the IPv4 addresses, which may be manually configured or determined automatically.[2]

  1. ^ C. Bao; C. Huitema; M. Bagnulo; M. Boucadair; X. Li (October 2010). IPv6 Addressing of IPv4/IPv6 Translators. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). doi:10.17487/RFC6052. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 6052. Proposed Standard. Updates RFC 4291.
  2. ^ M. Bagnulo; P. Matthews; I. van Beijnum (April 2011). Stateful NAT64: Network Address and Protocol Translation from IPv6 Clients to IPv4 Servers. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). doi:10.17487/RFC6146. ISSN 2070-1721. RFC 6146. Proposed Standard.