PAT translates multiple internal addresses into what kind of external address?

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PAT is a form of NAT that allows many internal hosts to share one external IP by using different port numbers for each connection. When internal devices send traffic out, the router rewrites the source to the single external IP and assigns a unique source port for each internal flow, keeping a table that maps external IP/port back to the internal host and port. This is why multiple internal addresses appear as one external address on the Internet. The other descriptions don’t fit PAT: it isn’t about mapping one internal address to many external addresses, and while NAT can use address pools, PAT specifically overloads a single external address with multiple connections.