IP Masquerade is a networking function in Linux similar to the one-to-many  (1:Many) NAT (Network Address Translation) servers found in many commercial  firewalls and network routers. For example, if a Linux host is connected to the  Internet via PPP, Ethernet, etc., the IP Masquerade feature allows other  "internal" computers connected to this Linux box (via PPP, Ethernet, etc.) to  also reach the Internet as well. Linux IP Masquerading allows for this  functionality even though these internal machines don't have an  officially assigned IP address.
MASQ allows a set of machines to invisibly access the  Internet via the MASQ gateway. To other machines on the Internet, the outgoing  traffic will appear to be from the IP MASQ Linux server itself. In addition to  the added functionality, IP Masquerade provides the foundation to create a  HEAVILY secured networking environment. With a well built firewall, breaking the  security of a well configured masquerading system and internal LAN should be  considerably difficult to accomplish.