How do firewall NAT tables impact performance under sustained high traffic?

Example Concept: NAT (Network Address Translation) tables in firewalls map private IP addresses to public IP addresses, allowing internal devices to communicate with external networks. Under high traffic, the firewall must maintain a large number of active NAT sessions, which can lead to increased processing time for each packet as the firewall checks and updates the NAT table. This can cause latency and, if the table reaches its capacity, can result in dropped connections or failed new session initiations.