In practical use, the maximum number of configurable IP pools is limited by the amount of available DRAM in the particular router. (Cisco recommends that you configure a pool size of 255.) Each pool should be no more than 16 bits. In 12.4(11)T and later, IOS introduce CCE (Common Classification Engine). This has limited NAT to only have a maximum of 255 pools. In 12.2S code base, there is no maximum pools restriction.