NAT type help

[Kratenser]

So my xbox keeps telling me that my NAT type is strict and that matchmaking will be slower. I've also had incidents with certain friends where, neither of us can join each other, whether it be in a party, private chat, or when hosting a game.
From what I've been told, having an open NAT would solve all of this, but before I do anything, are there any risks associated with having an open NAT?

(Have already ran searches for this but, everything I found was written with technical wording that I dont understand!)

Thanks,

 

[JourneyThroughHell]

Soo, you have a router I assume?

In case you do, there should be an option to unable UPnP if your router allows that. That might fix it.

 

[Kirkby]

I'll be honest i dont entirely remember the process of opening my NAT settings but to answer question i dont think theres any real threat to having an open NAT

Im sure there will be some small reason why its a bad idea but in the past 3 years my nats been wide open iv noticed no differences what so ever. Well.. apart from the fact that i have a lot more fun playing online now.

 

[devotedsniper]

It's perfectly safe all it does is translate the many ip address on your lan (your home network) to one for the WAN (internet), the reason we need it is because we have too many ip address for IPv4 (version 4, which is the main one at the minute, version 6 is being used more and more though) to handle in the world (theres around 3 billion available addresses with v4 but theres still too many machines which is why we use NAT to consolidate the masses into one per lan network).

You won't notice any difference for the most of your general usage, and you have no higher risk of being hacked or catching a virus than if it was disabled (in fact it lowers the risk because NAT creates a firewall between your network and the internet), and if that doesn't put your mind at rest most routers are defaulted to have it enabled anyway.

*EDIT* like JourneyThroughHell said you should also enable UPNP for maximum compatibility