Xbox Live and its relationship with NAT and Host Migration
If you’re one of the many xbox live users out there who is finding themselves very frustrated by what seems to be random problems when hosting games (I’m talking specifically here about Call Of Duty 4) then this may be of some use to you globally.. not just in COD4
When host migration takes place the system tries to move the host from one peer (player) to another, and because the xbox live multi-player system is entirely peer-to-peer this can fail occasionally.
If you randomly seem to get (on Call Of Duty) ‘host ended game’ or sometimes ‘host migration failed’ or even if you have a party and at the point of joining a game one of you seems to have fallen out of the party, then the following information may be helpful to you.
Problems generally occur due to the NAT status of your xbox. Microsoft provided a nice table to show how ropey your gaming will be if you have the misfortune to be connecting to someone with poor NAT or if you yourself have poor NAT.
If your router is listed in either of the pages below, then you should be ok because the Xbox should use UPnP to make all the required port mappings….
Routers compatible with Vista
Routers compatable with xbox live
…however if you’re not on that list then you need to pay attention. This will go some way towards helping you, it is by no means a total walk-through because everyone’s configuration is different… so…
The first step is to configure your xbox 360 with a static IP address. To do this you need to know the following;
IP Addresses of your PC
Subnet Mask
Router IP (Default Gateway)
Your ISP DNS Server Addresses
To find out all the information above you need to go to your PC and click start > run and type CMD then when you have a black box you should type IPCONFIG this should give you a result similar to below.
Now you need to choose an IP address that is not in use on your network (this is where it can get tricky but again, since everyones config / setup is different we have to make certain assumptions). In this example we will assume that the next free IP address is 192.168.1.26.
Now configure your xbox 360 with the following details;
IP Address - 192.168.1.26
Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway - 192.168.1.1
Primary DNS - x.x.x.x (specified by your ISP)
Secondary DNS - x.x.x.x (specified by your ISP)
The final step is a little trickier but i’ll do my best to make it as non-hardware-specific as possible…
You need to login to your router, to do this you should open a new browser and go to (in this example) http://192.168.1.1 and look for any areas relating to NAT or Port Forwarding.
You need to forward the following ports to the IP address you gave your xbox 360 (in this example 192.168.1.26);
UDP 88
UDP 3074
TCP 3074
You may need to consult your router documentation for assistance with this.
Once you have completed all this you should perform a full connection test on your xbox 360 and make a note of the NAT status…. and all being well it should be reporting OPEN
This information is provided ‘as is’ and i accept no responsibility for any errors you may make while trying to follow my tips. If anyone has any specific questions that are not covered in the user guide of their hardware or on the Microsoft site I’ll do my best to help you if you leave a comment.
Sources: Xbox Live Ports, Xbox Live NAT Information
