In recent times, the prevalence of home NATs and the widespread
implementation of Carrier-Grade NATs have posed significant challenges to
various applications, particularly those relying on Peer-to-Peer communication.
This paper addresses these issues by conducting a thorough review of related
literature and exploring potential techniques to mitigate the problems. The
literature review focuses on the disruptive effects of home NATs and CGNATs on
application performance. Additionally, the study examines existing approaches
used to alleviate these disruptions. Furthermore, this paper presents a
comprehensive guide on how to puncture a NAT and facilitate direct
communication between two peers behind any type of NAT. The techniques outlined
in the guide are rigorously tested using a simple application running the IPv8
network overlay, along with their built-in NAT penetration procedures. To
evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, 5G communication is
established between two phones using four different Dutch telephone carriers.
The results indicate successful cross-connectivity with three out of the four
carriers tested, showcasing the practical applicability of the suggested
methods.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure