OMFG I am at the end of my tether with this problem. I am actually close to just ripping my f**king XBox out of the wall and throwing it. I am venting here in the hope that someone can spot something or offer up something I've not thought of.
My friend and I have a problem where by our XBoxes cannot sustain an XBox Live party with each other for more than a couple of minutes. Sometimes we cannot even get into a party, the XBox reports "Network Connection Issues". This problem only appears to occur between he and I. I can happily start Parties with other people and not have an issue. He doesn't have anyone else on his friend's list to test with (might need to sort this). Even so, with the problem only occurring between he and I you'd think that it is him with the problem. Unfortunately the problem only started occurring after I upgraded my Vigor to the latest firmware but also now occurs after I've rolled back to the previous firmware (3.3.3.1)
The problem also manifests across both of my WAN connections, so it does not appear to be a problem with my ISP. Just to really spice things up I gave my friend a new router to try and even with that in place we still have the problem.
My friend has:
- a upto 24mb BE ADSL connection.
- Netgear (something) router in bridge mode.
- DLink DIR-615 cable router.
- XBox with a static IP connected to the DLink
- All ports forwarded and the XBox network test reports Open NAT
I have:
- 50mb VirginMedia (WAN1)
- uptp 24mb O2 ADSL (WAN2)
- Draytek Vigor 2920 Dual WAN router running the latest (3.3.6) firmware.
- XBox360 on a static IP of 192.168.76.14
I have configured the Vigor Load-Balance Policy so that any and all XBox traffic should be on WAN1.
This rule is rule 1 in the Load-Balancy Policy list.
rule: any | WAN1 | 192.168.76.14 | 192.168.76.14
Now here is where the fun starts...
Draytek's support documents state that the
port-forwarding order of precedence is: Port Redirection -> Open Ports -> DMZMSDN Article on XBoxLive 360 Ports lists that ports: 88(UDP), 1863(TCP+UDP) and 3074(TCP+UDP) need to be opened.
* 53(TCP+UDP) and 80(TCP) are outbound (DNS and HTTP) only AFAIK.
If I configure all of the above required open ports into the Vigor's Port Redirection config my XBox can only manage Moderate NAT and we have the Party Chat problem.
*I cannot find anyway to determine which port(s) are causing the problem.
If I instead use Open Ports then the XBox achieves Open NAT and we have the Party Chat problem.
If I use the DMZ then the XBox reports Open NAT and we have the Party Chat problem.
uPNP gives Open NAT and last night the problem appeared to be resolved using uPNP but today it's back :/
It is at this point that I am at a complete loss.