What type of NAT allows multiple clients to use the same public IP address?

Port Address Translation (PAT) is designed to enable multiple clients to use the same public IP address by distinguishing individual sessions through unique port numbers. This is especially useful in scenarios where the number of available public IP addresses is limited but many devices need to connect to the internet.

When clients behind a NAT device, such as a MikroTik router, initiate outbound connections, PAT translates their private IP addresses into the single public IP address while assigning different source port numbers to each connection. This way, the router can keep track of each session and ensure that incoming responses are sent back to the correct internal device.

Static NAT primarily maps a single private IP address to a single public IP address, creating a one-to-one relationship, which does not allow multiple clients to share the same public IP. Dynamic NAT, while allowing some flexibility with IP addressing, also typically maps a private IP to a public IP one-to-one but from a pool of public addresses. Destination NAT primarily alters the destination address in incoming packets and is more concerned with directing traffic to specific internal resources rather than allowing multiple clients to share an IP.

Therefore, PAT is the most effective method among the options provided for enabling multiple clients to share the same public IP.