Xbox – NAT rating and how to improve it

technical-issuesxbox-360

From what I've found, the following appears to reflect how NAT rating affects your multiplayer capabilities:

  • OPEN – Can play & voice chat with anyone.
  • MODERATE – May be unable to play or voice chat with STRICT.
  • STRICT – Can only play & voice chat with OPEN.

However, this does not give me a whole lot of clarity as to what exactly these ratings mean as a reflection on my home network or internet connection, nor what I can do to get my system into an OPEN status.

What conditions might make a system show as MODERATE or STRICT? How can I get my system from MODERATE or STRICT to OPEN, without drastically changing my home network?

Best Answer

Basically, a "NAT rating" will tell you how easy it is for others to reach your system for peer to peer connections.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on one or more poince, since I don't own an Xbox. This is based on my knowledge about networking. The only state I'm not 100% sure about right now is "moderate".

Basically, these three states or ratings can be described as follows:

  • OPEN: Your Xbox 360 can be reached from the outside by remote connections. If there has to be a port opened, it will utilize UPnP to tell the router to open the port.
  • MODERATE: Your Xbox 360 might be reached through some ports from the outside, but it wasn't able to utilize UPnP to configure your router.
  • STRICT: Your Xbox360 can't be reached from the outside by remote connections. Your router doesn't answer or react to UPnP requests.

Keep in mind that an open NAT with UPnP enabled can be a potential security risk (as with any server listening on remote ports). UPnP may also be abused by malware on PCs or mobile devices to be able to operate servers with incoming connections.

Related Topic