What advantage does NAT provide in terms of IP address usage?

NAT, or Network Address Translation, primarily allows multiple devices on a local network to share a single public IP address when they access the internet. This significantly reduces the demand for globally unique IP addresses because organizations can use private IP address ranges within their internal networks. Private addresses are not routable on the internet, meaning that they can be reused across different networks without conflict. By translating these private addresses to a single public address when packets are sent out to the internet, NAT conserves the limited pool of available public IP addresses while still enabling multiple devices to connect to external networks. This is particularly important as the number of devices needing internet access continues to grow, thus making efficient use of the available IP address space critical.