Support Center Application Notes VPN Application Notes
 
  
There are many incompatibilities between NAT and IPSec. For detailed information you may read the IETF Informational RFC 3715 IPsec-NAT Compatibility Requirements . So you will meet the following problems when there is NAT devices between the VPN client and VPN server:



1. The use of the IPSec AH protocol is not supported.
2. Only one outgoing IPSec VPN connection can be established at a time.
3. Can't create L2TP over IPSec VPN connection.

Note: About the 1st problem that can't use IPSec AH protocol, the purpose of AH is to protect immutable fields within the IP header (including IP addresses). However, a NAPT device translates IP addresses, invalidating the AH integrity check. As a result, NAPT and AH are fundamentally incompatible and there is no requirement that an IPsec-NAT compatibility solution has to support AH transport or tunnel mode.

For the 2nd and 3rd problems listed above, recently the IETF has finally worked out a solution called NAT Transversal (NAT-T), standarized in the RFC's 3947 and 3948. If you're going to use IPSec or L2TP over IPSec between NAT endpoints, make sure your VPN client and VPN gateway both support NAT-T.

Example 1: Creating L2TP over IPSec connection

Example 2: Creating multiple IPSec connections

Relative FAQs :
    Does Vigor support IPSec NAT Traversal?

    When NAT Traversal is needed?



Page last modified : 13 October 2008