Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) Practice Exam 2025 – All-in-One Guide to Mastering Your Certification!

The technology that translates IP addresses in a network is Network Address Translation (NAT). NAT is primarily used to map multiple private IP addresses to a single public IP address or a smaller range of public IP addresses. This process is essential for conserving the number of public IP addresses an organization uses while allowing devices within a private network to communicate with external networks.

When a device with a private IP address sends a request to the internet, NAT alters the packet header, replacing the private IP address with the public IP address assigned to the NAT device. This allows the device to send and receive data with external networks while keeping the private IP addresses hidden. When response packets come back to the NAT device, it translates the public IP address back to the appropriate private IP address to route the packets to the correct device within the private network.

In contrast, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) provides secure access over the internet by creating an encrypted tunnel between the user and the remote network, but does not specifically translate IP addresses. MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) is a protocol for speeding up and shaping network traffic flows; it defines how packets are forwarded based on tags rather than traditional IP addressing, but it does not perform address translation. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)