NAT

NAT (Network Address Translation) is the technology that lets all the devices in your home or office share a single public IP address. Your router assigns private IP addresses (like 192.168.1.x) to each device internally, then translates these to your single public IP when traffic goes to the internet. This is why port forwarding exists: since the router has one public IP, you need to tell it which internal device should receive incoming connections on specific ports.