The option for Hardware NAT on the new consumer routers will be a welcome feature that support 3rd Party firmwares, like OpenWRT, DDWRT, etc. These 3rd Party firmwares add features that are available as open source software that the OEM may not be able to package with their product's stock firmware.

Since the proprietary code is limited to the stock firmware that supports the Hardware NAT'ing functions it provides performance, reduces latency, improves throughput and rescues CPU load, but prevents users from the extended and free functionality available