Common Uses
The most common use of private addresses is in residential networks, since most Internet service providers (ISPs) only allocate a single publicly routable IP address to each residential customer, but many homes have more than one computer or other Internet connected device, such as televisions. In this situation, a network address translator (NAT/PAT) gateway is usually used to provide Internet connectivity to multiple hosts.
Private addresses are also commonly used in corporate networks, which for security reasons, are not connected directly to the Internet. Often a proxy, SOCKS gateway, or similar devices are used to provide restricted Internet access to network-internal users.
In both cases, private addresses are often seen as enhancing network security for the internal network, since it is difficult for an Internet host to connect directly to an internal system.
Read more about this topic: Private Network
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