[Spyderturbo007]

I'm having a little bit of a problem wrapping my head around NAT. Two of my friends and I just started playing games over Xbox Live. One guy was wireless, living in a huge house and only had one router on the third floor. His Xbox was in the basement and he had virtually no signal and kept lagging all the time. I went over to his house one night, moved the router to the basement and ran a cable over to his Xbox. Ever since then, we've been getting error messages when trying to start a party. Microsoft says it's an NAT problem, but nothing has changed on anyone's setup except from him moving to wired. Wouldn't NAT be router specific and not connection type specific?

Microsoft advises that you turn on uPnP and if that doesn't work, provides a list of ports to open so you can get an open NAT. I've tried that and also tried dumping the Xbox 360 in the DMZ which doesn't work either. The funny thing, is that if we reboot his modem and router, it works until the next time we try to play. Then we have problems and he has to reboot again. Any idea why he would have to reboot every time?

The Xbox allows you to run network connectivity tests and warns if you have a Moderate or Strict NAT. All of ours is showing up as Open so no problems there, according to Microsoft.

I know this isn't an Xbox 360 forum, but I've tried everything on their website and wanted to see if anyone had any insight as to how NAT works.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 28 July 2010 - 07:23 AM.

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Well, I got it working properly over the weekend. It seems as though the problem was actually on my side and not on the side where we switched to wired. Oddly enough, it started the same time as the switch from wireless to wired. It looks like I have a double NAT, well, that's all I can come up with.

My FIOS Actiontech isn't actually in bridge mode, so technically I have two routers each functioning as a DHCP server. I would put the Actiontech in bridge mode, but I can't because it controls the data to my FIOS DVR. When it was installed, Verizon sent me a different router that supposedly disables the DHCP server on one particular port and not the others. They say that allows people to run their own router without screwing up the cable box. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it seems to be because I get an external IP address on the Dlink which is behind the Actiontech.

Anyway, I ended up using one of the other ports on the Actiontech and allowing that to handle the routing to the Xbox 360 and it connected immediately. I'm guessing I somehow had a double NAT using both routers even though the Xbox said that my NAT was open. It's just weird that it all started when I moved my buddy to wired and relocated his router to the basement.

Oh, well, I might not understand how or what was actually "fixed", but at least it works.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 02 August 2010 - 06:49 AM.

[Spyderturbo007]

Well, I got it working properly over the weekend. It seems as though the problem was actually on my side and not on the side where we switched to wired. Oddly enough, it started the same time as the switch from wireless to wired. It looks like I have a double NAT, well, that's all I can come up with.

My FIOS Actiontech isn't actually in bridge mode, so technically I have two routers each functioning as a DHCP server. I would put the Actiontech in bridge mode, but I can't because it controls the data to my FIOS DVR. When it was installed, Verizon sent me a different router that supposedly disables the DHCP server on one particular port and not the others. They say that allows people to run their own router without screwing up the cable box. I'm not sure if that's true or not, but it seems to be because I get an external IP address on the Dlink which is behind the Actiontech.

Anyway, I ended up using one of the other ports on the Actiontech and allowing that to handle the routing to the Xbox 360 and it connected immediately. I'm guessing I somehow had a double NAT using both routers even though the Xbox said that my NAT was open. It's just weird that it all started when I moved my buddy to wired and relocated his router to the basement.

Oh, well, I might not understand how or what was actually "fixed", but at least it works.

Edited by Spyderturbo007, 02 August 2010 - 06:49 AM.

[Fenor]

Glad you figured it out, and thanks for sharing how you fixed it!