It is my hope this blog entry will help others with this nagging NAT Strict issue. Many have chimed in how to make NAT Open. Here is my experience trying three options and the one that worked for me:

I have been able to play on Xbox Live for about two years without any trouble whatsoever. Then Gears of War was released with online co-op capability. A friend of mine a few Western states over, would host the game and send me the invite. It worked great for two weeks, but then suddenly one day the connection would drop. I could no longer connect and I was perplexed what changed. After running the Xbox Live Connection Test on Xbox 360, NAT was coming up Strict; everything else was connected and confirmed. I didn't know what Strict NAT meant at the time, and I don't even remember what it said when I could play Gears of War online. But after hours of research I learned that NAT needed to say Open for optimum online gaming, so that was the goal.

Twelve hours later over a two day span of troubleshooting, reconfiguring my Netgear WGT624v2 Xbox Live Compatible router, and upgrading to the Xbox 360 Wireless Connectivity Adapter, from my MN-740 Xbox Wireless Bridge, I finally figured out how to make it work.

There are three methods to try that I got from the Xbox forums, including:

1. DMZ
2. Port Forwarding
3. UPnp (Universal PlugNPlay)

The most important point about these three methods is that they cannot be mixed. You must try each one individually. Also, not all routers have a UPnP option. If yours doesn't, I hate to break it to you, but you need a new router.

First, I called Xbox Live Support and they concluded that they couldn't transfer me to Tier 2 support until I could rule out my ISP as an issue. You see, there are Xbox Live Compatible ISP's and while mine isn't, when I connected my cable modem directly to the Xbox 360 the NAT reported as Open. Case closed on that.

Using the DMZ option was useless; it just didn't work. I tried it with a static internal IP and I tried it on Automatic DHCP with a Reserved IP for the Xbox 360 using the MAC Address.

I configured a Static IP to use Port Forwarding for ports UDP 88, UDP 2074, UDP 3074, and TCP 3074 - useless.

So the ONLY option that worked for me on my router is the UPnp option. My configuration on the Xbox 360 was set to Auto (IP/DNS). I am using WPA security on the wireless router. Port Forwarding is configured for other ports, but not the ports mentioned above, and DMZ is disabled. To my surprise and delight, NAT reported as Open.