What is the danger of the permit any entry in a NAT access list?

A `permit any` entry in a NAT access list can result in the router attempting to translate all internal IP addresses attempting to reach the outside. This can quickly exhaust the available public IP addresses in a dynamic NAT pool, or if PAT is used, it can lead to an excessively large NAT translation table, consuming significant router memory and CPU resources, thus overloading the router.

NAT translates addresses, it doesn't assign too many addresses to an interface; the issue is with the number of *translations* or exhaustion of the *translation pool*.

`permit any` does not disable the `overload` command; rather, it expands the scope of addresses that will be subject to the `overload` function.

`permit any` actually ensures *all* IP addresses specified by the ACL are translated, so it would not prevent correct translation, but rather could lead to unwanted or resource-intensive translation.