I'm not arguing about that, it is delaying things indeed. However I
wonder which kind of instant messaging you are referring to, as all
the
ones I've seen work fine through NAT.
Peer-to-peer CUSeeMe stopped working for me when I installed a NAT box
at home. Now I can only do peer-to-peer CUSeeMe on a single computer
for which I've installed the appropriate port redirects in the NAT box.
Sure, server-based CUSeeMe still works on all the computers, but
peer-to-peer now only works on the one.
Any protocol where you have to receive an incoming connection on a fixed
port, and want to do so on multiple machines, just doesn't work when a
NAT is in place.
/jeff