Round-Robin Port Allocation

Round-robin allocation is one method you can configure to allocate private addresses to external addresses and ports. Round-robin allocation assigns one port from each external address in a range before repeating the process for each address in the next range. After ports have been allocated for all addresses in the last range, the allocation process wraps around and allocates the next unused port for addresses in the first range. For example, if you have a NAT pool range of 100.0.0.1 through 100.0.0.12 and the first port is 3333:

• The first connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.1:3333.

• The second connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.2:3333.

• The third connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.3:3333.

• The fourth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.4:3333.

• The fifth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.5:3333.

• The sixth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.6:3333.

• The seventh connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.7:3333.

• The eighth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.8:3333.

• The ninth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.9:3333.

• The tenth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.10:3333.

• The eleventh connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.11:3333.

• The twelfth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.12:3333.

• Wraparound occurs and the thirteenth connection is allocated to the address:port 100.0.0.1:3334.