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Carrier-Grade Network Address Translation (cgNAT, also known as LSN and NAT444) is used by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to mitigate IPv4 address exhaustion by making thousands of customers share a single public IPv4 address.
Complaints from law enforcement agencies
Law enforcement agencies find it harder to identify criminals behind an IPv4 address used by thousands of people. As a result the agency may have to tap connections of all users sharing that address to identify the criminal. [1][2]
A 2016 survey conducted by the European Cybercrime Centre revealed that 90% of EU Member State cyber divisions regularly encountered errors related to CGNAT technologies during investigations, sometimes forcing them to discontinue cases or employ more resource-intensive approaches. [3][2]
The process of reverse-tracking from cgNAT logs is fundamentally flawed. In criminal cases where cgNAT logs are used as primary evidence, there exists significant potential for misidentification, as the same public IP address and port combination might be reassigned to different users within a very short time. [2]
Security concerns
If a malicious actor using a cgNAT IP address gets blacklisted by a server/website then all users sharing the same cgNAT IP will also get blacklisted. [4]
A DDoS attack targeted at one user behind a cgNAT IP address affects all users behind that address, which can disrupt service for entire neighborhoods. [5][6][4]
Service limitations
Because multiple people share the same public IP address, they are unreachable from the internet. This prevents them from hosting personal websites or having remote access to home security cameras or personal computers. cgNAT basically breaks all protocols that require direct connection to work. [7][8]
To circumvent these limitations, ISPs typically offer subscriptions for dedicated IPv4 addresses or IPv6 tunnels.[9]
- ↑ European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) (17 Oct 2017). "Are you sharing the same IP address as a criminal? Law enforcement call for the end of Carrier Grade NAT (CGN) to increase accountability online". europol.europa.eu.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Gözükara, Furkan (8 Nov 2021). "Challenges and possible severe legal consequences of application users identification from CNG-Logs". sciencedirect.com.
- ↑ European Police Office (Europol). "IOCTA 2016 INTERNET ORGANISED CRIME THREAT ASSESSMENT" (PDF). europol.europa.eu.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Asturias, Diego (21 Jul 2025). "CGNAT: The Workaround to IPv4 Depletion [2025]". rapidseedbox.com.
- ↑ Newman, Sean (8 Mar 2022). "There Goes the Neighborhood: The DDoS Disadvantages of Carrier Grade NAT". corero.com.
- ↑ Turner, Glen (1 Oct 2019). "The Effect of DDoS Attacks on Carrier-grade NAT Devices". a10networks.com.
- ↑ Swer, Daryll (25 Mar 2021). "Shortcomings of CGNAT and Potential Workarounds". daryllswer.com.
- ↑ "Pros & Cons Deploying Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT)". brandergroup.net.
- ↑ "About Static IP addresses". att.com. 8 Mar 2024.