NAT type isn’t always an issue, and depends on how your network is configured.

Inside an online game's settings or on your console you may have seen the NAT Type field and wondered what it meant. In some cases, you might even get a warning that your NAT type is strict and that matchmaking will be affected.

In many cases, this is more informational than anything you need to act on. If your game is working fine in matchmaking and voice chat, then adjustments shouldn't be necessary. But if your network is configured poorly for gaming and you keep getting disconnected or seeing errors, you should make some changes to avoid performance issues. Let's look over what NAT type means, how it affects you and what you can do to adjust it.

NAT stands for network address translation and is a key part of how the internet has worked for some time. IPv4, the original scheme for IP addresses, only has enough room for about four billion unique numbers. That was plenty when the standard was developed in the '80s but it quickly became stretched once everyone got online and started adding dozens of smart devices.

ISPs came up with NAT as a solution. With this, each home has one public IP address and its router translates incoming and outgoing traffic so all devices within it work under a single public IP. It's not a significant roadblock to most network traffic, but for real-time applications like gaming small bits of inconsistency and these layers of translation can have a big effect.

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