IPv4 addresses are scarce and expensive, so many budget VPS ship with a **shared (NAT) IPv4* rather than a dedicated one. Here's what that actually changes — and what it doesn't.*
Why hosts use NAT IPv4
The world ran out of fresh IPv4 addresses years ago; they now trade on a secondary market for real money. To keep a VPS cheap, many hosts put several VPS behind one public IPv4 and give each customer a range of forwarded ports — that's NAT (Network Address Translation). It's not a scam; it's how affordable hosting stays affordable.
What NAT IPv4 means in practice
You share a public IPv4 with other VPS on the node, and you get your own dedicated ports mapped to your machine. For example, your SSH might live on a high port like :53022 instead of the default :22. Outbound traffic works normally; inbound traffic reaches you on your assigned/forwarded ports.
What works perfectly fine on NAT
- Game servers — you get proper port allocations; players connect on your port.
- Bots (Discord, Telegram, trading) — they make outbound connections, so NAT is a non-issue.
- Dev/test boxes, CI runners, scrapers, VPNs for personal use.
- Websites — put them behind a reverse proxy or Cloudflare, or use a forwarded port. Cloudflare in front of a NAT VPS is a very common, clean setup.
What really wants a dedicated IP
- Your own mail server — deliverability depends on reverse DNS/PTR on a dedicated IP. Don't run production mail on shared NAT.
- Services that must own standard ports 80/443 on a bare IP without a proxy in front.
- Some P2P / specific protocols that dislike port translation.
The honest summary: NAT IPv4 is great for most hobby and small-production workloads, and a dealbreaker for a couple of specific ones (notably self-hosted mail). Know which camp your project is in before you buy.
Originally published at overnight.host — honest, no-nonsense VPS, game server & web hosting. Browse the guides »
