nat

Nat is a given name, often a shortened form of Nathan, Nathanael, or Nathaniel. It has English-language usage dating back to the 18th century and is used in various English-speaking regions as a casual or affectionate form of a longer name. As a standalone given name, Nat can be found in historical and contemporary contexts.

Notable people named Nat include Nat King Cole (American singer and pianist), Nat Turner (historical figure and leader of a slave rebellion in 1831), Nat Wolff (American actor and musician), Nat Faxon (American actor and writer), and Nat Phillips (English footballer). The name also appears across diverse fields such as sports, entertainment, and politics.

NAT is an acronym for Network Address Translation, a technique in computer networking. NAT translates private IP addresses used inside a local network to a public IP address for communication over the Internet, allowing multiple devices to share a single public address. Common variants include static NAT, dynamic NAT, and port address translation (PAT). NAT helps conserve public IP space and can provide a degree of network security, but it can complicate end-to-end connectivity and some protocols.

NAT is also used to denote nucleic acid testing, a laboratory method for detecting pathogens by identifying their genetic material. NATs are widely used in medical diagnostics, including tests for HIV, hepatitis viruses, and SARS-CoV-2, often employing amplification techniques such as PCR to detect their nucleic acids.

In information theory, a nat is a unit of information based on natural logarithms. One nat equals the amount of information contained in a natural-log-based measure, and it is approximately 1.4427 bits (since 1 bit equals about 0.6931 nats; conversely, 1 nat ≈ 1.4427 bits).