XBOX360 and Opening the NAT
Rich Gossweiler
23 March 2008

What is NAT and Why do I Care?

The Network Address Translation (NAT) that your router uses can be set to Open, Moderate or Strict. If it is set to Moderate or Strict, as I recently discovered mine was, this can affect gamers from finding each other, connecting to hosted games or being able to use a voice connection [microsoft reference].

To see what your NAT is set to, turn on your XBox360 and hit the right D-pad several times to go over to the "System" blade. Then pick the Network option and run the network connection test. The NAT row will tell you if you are strict, moderate or open.










How To Set Your XBOX360 NAT to Open

There are two ways to open the NAT for the XBOX: either create a "tunnel" for the ports it uses (88 and 3074 for both UDP and TCP/IP) or put the entire box on the other side of the router's firewall (the DMZ).

The following describes how to do both methods. For these instructions I am using the popular Linksys WRT54G.

You should also do these steps:

Method One: Opening Two Ports

  1. On your computer, start a browser and go to http://192.168.1.1 and login (if you have never done this, the userid is blank and the password is "admin" -- change the password before Mr. Bubbles does).


  2. Click on the "Applications & Gaming tab and open ports 88 and 3074 for both udp and tcp/ip for IP Address 192.168.1.200.




  3. Under the Administration tab make sure that UPnP is off



  4. On the XBox go to the System Blade and Network configuration:



    and set it from automatic to manual. Then set the address and masks to:




When you re-test on the Xbox, you should see the NAT set to Open.



Method Two: DMZ the Xbox

This puts the Xbox on the other side of the firewall, exposing it more than the previous method.
  1. On your PC connect to your router by going to 192.168.1.1 in a browser.
  2. Under the Games & Applications tab make sure the DMZ is disabled
  3. On the XBox go to the System Blade and Network configuration:



    and set it from automatic to manual. Then set the address and masks to:




  4. Go back to your computer and enable DMZ to 192.168.1.200
Run the network connection test on the xbox and the NAT should be open.