CGNAT Isn’t a Capability, It’s a Lifecycle Strategy

With the exponential growth of subscribers and connected devices, service providers have been investing in infrastructure to support increasing traffic growth while implementing new services to attract new subscribers and increase revenue.

Preparing for the Internet of Things (IoT) is also contributing to the demand on the infrastructure and the number of devices connected to the network. With the global exhaustion of free pools of IPv4 addresses and the continuing adoption of IPv6, service providers are facing new challenges in sustaining growth and business continuity.

Many service providers will need to implement an address translation strategy that includes both a short-term plan to address the preservation of their existing IPv4 address allocation, and a long-term plan to seamlessly migrate to an IPv6 infrastructure.

This approach will require a solution that not only provides a robust set of carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) capabilities — and IPv6 migration options based on each service provider’s existing infrastructure — but one that also addresses the entire lifecycle of the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

This white paper provides an overview of the various components that are required for a complete CGNAT and IPv6 migration solution, which encompass the entire lifecycle of the transition to IPv6.