H.323 and NAT firewalls, Shannon McCracken SMCC004

• Network addrss translation (NAT) is a technique for allowing a local network of computers to access the Internet as if they were a single computer. This has certain advantages and disadvantages. H.323 is a standard telephony protocol to allow voice calls to be made over the Internet and other IP networks. However, H.323 is incapable of working over NAT firewalls without some level of assistance. This paper explores possible solutions to allow NAT firewalls to sucessfully route H.323 traffic, and points out possible future research directions.