NAT Boost and QoS are two common functions to optimize your network. However, the two functions are contradict with each other. Why the two cannot work at the same time? To answer this doubt, it’s necessary to know how do the two functions work first.

How Does NAT Boost Work?

NAT Boost is also known as NAT acceleration. In some cases, it is also named as CTF (Cut-Through Forwarding). NAT Boost is a set of specially designed software rules with hardware functions created to accelerate Internet connections.

CTF or pass-through forwarding is when the router starts sending transmission frames immediately after receiving the destination. However, the router relies on the terminal device to tell it whether the data was damaged by resending.

How Does QoS Work?

QoS (Quality of Service), as its name suggests, is designed to ensure enough bandwidth of critical network traffic under limited network capacity. The core of QoS is assigning different priorities to different applications and handling each accordingly. Users can set priorities for certain applications and devices.

Differentiated-Service provides differentiated processing and bandwidth allocation to specific data flows. Packets are classified and marked with tags according to their respective priority levels. This is the precondition for differentiated service, just like express delivery.

The Conflict between NAT Boost and QoS

NAT Boost, specifically the CTF Cut Through Forwarding portion can conflict with a few other common features represented by QoS.

According to the working principles of NAT Boost and QoS above, we can find out that, QoS or Quality of Service features come in direct conflict with the implementation of NAT Acceleration or Cut-Through Forwarding.

The precondition of QoS options let your router “prioritize” the type of traffic that will be transmitted first. That’s to say, it requires the router actually holding some data and make that choice. While NAT Boost lat the router send trasmission directly, without holding data. Therefore, NAT boost removes that possibility by starting the transmission as soon as it receives the destination.

Similarly, in addition to Quality of Service, there are also some other functions cannont work with NAT Boost simultaneously. For instance, Traffic Monitoring, Parental Control and so on. That is because these functions also equire the router to examine the type of traffic, making it’s incompatible with the CTF feature, as CTF transmits the data almost as soon as it receives the proper destination.

Should I make NAT Boost or QoS on?

NAT boost improve the peak connection speed of your home network’s internet service. However, you should consider turning it off if you require any of conflicting features: Port Forwarding, QoS, Traffic Monitor, and Parental Control.

QoS, as well as Traffic Monitoring and Parental Control, can provide more complex and advanced settings. QoS can efficiently improve performance of important traffic.It is aslo useful when traffic going from your LAN to the internet, but might not help too much if your ISP provides a low total bandwidth.

Please set your network according to your actual network condition and needs.