I’m new, so be gentle, but I need a straight answer on this.

I’m studying for the CCENT, and I’m having trouble understanding NAT and port forwarding.

If I have a web server and I use static NAT on my edge router to assign a public IP to the servers local private IP, what is the point of port forwarding?

I’ve read everywhere on the Net and can’t find any explanation of how port forwarding works or why it’s necessary if something like static NAT exists.

Perhaps I’m missing something fundamental here. I’ve been known to do that.

The other thing is, I keep reading that traffic can’t access resources on your network from the Internet if you have PAT or regular (no overload) dynamic NAT on your edge router. Again, no one can offer me an explanation as to why, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the possibility the hosts on the inside of your network might not have the same global IP as they are dynamically assigned.