New connections to one partner API fail at peak, only through the NAT gateway, while established flows sail on. What is the ceiling?

Bandwidth graphs look healthy and the partner swears they are fine. The wall is ports, not bits: the available source-port budget depends on the gateway and its address allocation.

Updated Sep 2026 · Grounded in researched DevOps, SRE and platform engineering interview loops, written to a senior-engineer editorial bar, and never padded to hit a word count.

Bandwidth graphs look healthy and the partner swears they are fine. The wall is ports, not bits: the available source-port budget depends on the gateway and its address allocation.

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