I have a router that I can turn on and off NAT loopback. The router is just used for game playing and phones and normal everyday Internet browsing.
My question is this will there be any benefit to having NAT loopback enabled? Will it help with PS4 UPnP or does it even have anything to do with that type of stuff? I’ve Google it and can’t come up with a definite answer.
2 Answers
Short Explanation
Pretty confident the answer is enabling NAT loopback will not help you in any way for your basic needs. NAT loopback just simplifies the way a LAN connection might access services you expose to the world on your WAN. But if you don’t know what that means or haven’t dealt with that stuff, you should be fine without NAT loopback.
Longer Explanation
The main benefit of NAT loopback is that it allows one to treat the router’s WAN address as if it were in a LAN. This is beneficial if you have a hostname connected to the IP address of your WAN or just if you want to be able to access services via your WAN address instead of dealing with the internal LAN address.
Meaning let’s say you have an ISP assigned address of 123.456.789.0. Whenever you do anything on the Internet, that 123.456.789.0 is connected to your actions. That’s the way most of us use our Internet connections.
But let’s say in you are hosting a service on your LAN behind your router. Meaning you have some server doing something at address 192.168.1.10. Well, if you wanted to access those services on your LAN right now you would connect to 192.168.1.10. Okay, that’s simple enough. But what if you wanted someone to access that server via the WAN on 123.456.789.0.
Well, to have 123.456.789.0 access the services via 192.168.1.10 one would typically just setup port forwarding. Like let’s say 123.456.789.0 is running a web server on port 80, then you would set your router to port forward port 80 connections coming to 123.456.789.0 so they go to 192.168.1.10.
But what does any of that have to do with NAT loopback?
Well, here is the conundrum of port forwarding: If you wanted to access the web server on 123.456.789.0 via your LAN, you couldn’t use that address. You would need to use 192.168.1.10. Which in some cases might be confusing.
What NAT loopback does is it allows you to tell your router to be aware of any requests coming from inside the LAN to port 80 and route them correctly to 123.456.789.0.
This might sound like a trivial difference, but it can allow you to simplify bookmarks and stored connections by not having to keep track of two IP addresses. Just enable NAT loopback and then go to 123.456.789.0 and you will always get the server on 192.168.1.10 without ever having to remember that internal IP address.
The other benefit is if you had a domain name or hostname that pointed to 123.456.789.0 for some reason, that domain name or hostname would always work since it would always point to 123.456.789.0. No need to edit a hosts file to “hack” an entry to point to 192.168.1.10; just let NAT loopback properly route 123.456.789.0 to 192.168.1.10.
Which is all to say: For basic gaming use and simple Internet browsing, you will most likely never bump heads with a scenario in which you would need to enable NAT loopback.
A nice explanation on when NAT loopback can and should be used can be found on this NAT loopback page on the OpenSimulator site. In the case of OpenSimulator, if someone is hosting a public aspect of OpenSimulator on their home computer, NAT loopback makes it easier for that public service to be advertised to the world and easily accessible to the “hoster” on the LAN as well.
0im in the situation on my xbox one i had to place my xbox one's ip in my DMZ and enable NAT loopback to get open nat and disabling NAT loopback made my NAT moderate if this helps those gamers but on my last router this was not an issue so i would suggest trying your own methods to see what works as one persons solutions may not work for another.
might also talk to ur IT tech support from your ISP for any Q&A that best fit your needs.
what JakeGould said is correct information though just wanted to throw my situation out there incase another ends up in same situation as me . i own 1 router/modem and 2 routers throughout my home. all 3 have different ip addresses with 4 xbox's connected so in my very rare situation.... ive had to modify alot of settings on all devices and open different ports and on a few routers in the past ive disabled UPNP pending on what devices were connected to it to get open NAT . now in days if your under your xbox's settings u can change your DNS and PORTS to get open NAT maybe try something like this if your playstation has similar settings .
