Improving NAT traversal, part 2: challenges in cloud environments

Cloud NAT gateways from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are designed for scalability and outbound connections, making them highly symmetric and challenging for peer-to-peer connectivity. Several workarounds exist: assigning public IPs to instances, deploying custom NAT instances with configurable behavior, using cloud-specific features like GCP's endpoint-independent mapping, or implementing subnet routers. The most effective solution remains giving instances public IPs with proper firewall rules, as WireGuard's encryption provides sufficient security while eliminating NAT complexity.