// ENGADGET — MOBILE & WEB
What does NAT type mean for online gaming?
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.
The newer version of the internet protocol, IPv6, has enough possible IP addresses for every grain of sand on Earth to have billions of their own. It thus doesn't require NAT because every device can have its own IP address.
Many modern devices support IPv6, but the transition hasn't fully completed yet. Some devices work in a hybrid mode where they can take advantage of IPv6 but fall back to IPv4 if there are issues or another device along the chain isn't compatible.
NAT type in a game explains how well your device can communicate with the wider internet. On Xbox and PC, you'll see three types: Open, Moderate and Strict. On PlayStation, these are respectively known as Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3. The Nintendo Switch uses A, B and C, with D for connections that are heavily restricted and F if your console can't connect at all. NAT types are not an official network specification, which is why they vary across platforms.
An Open NAT means your gaming console or PC is directly connected to the internet and has no restrictions on what it can communicate with. (As explained above, this isn't actually NAT, but games still designate it as such.) Moderate indicates that your system is behind a router for its internet connection but is still able to communicate as needed. Finally, Strict means your system has necessary ports blocked and can't communicate normally.
Although Open sounds like it should be the goal, that's not really the case. Having your console or PC directly connected to the internet is impractical, as it would require you to connect your machine to your modem, preventing you from using a router to get every other device online unless you used a network switch. Importantly, it would also be insecure since you wouldn't have the firewall or other security features of your router protecting your network traffic.