EDIT: i dont reply to pms, if i did i'd be a full time volunteer. This was designed to be a generalised, simple guide and it has achieved that if the thousands of appreciative comments are to be believed. It you're a kid it's fine to ask for dad's help with this. [b]If you're having problems have a go fixing it by using great resources like the FAQ in the third post (which summarises the 60 pages of help given here) and portforward.com[/b], the ultimate networking destination. Exotic queries/routers can be answered/troubleshot by wikipedia and google. (search for " 'troubleshooting'") If all else fails you are welcome to leave a detailed description of your problem in the thread, though I stress googling your query will usually give you an answer instantly. Hey Bungie.net Member. Master Chef SC here. Keep the credit to me and you can put this guide anywhere. This is all about allowing everyone to directly connect to you in games like Halo Reach, so you don't have to settle for the scraps of Matchmaking. AKA Open NAT. You will not be vulnerable to hackers since you will only be allowing people into programs and games that you select. However, there are some side effects from learning how to get an Open NAT on your computer and xbox: o - You'll remove any chance of connection problems with friends o - You'll get better pings in all online computer games, because you can connect to everybody and so have more choice in matchmaking. o - You'll stream your computer hard drive's videos, pictures and music onto your Xbox without any stuttering. o - You'll maximise the speed of your peer to peer downloading including MSN file transferring o - You won't pay an idiot 50 bucks every time something easy goes wrong. The process is pretty technical but it'll try to explain it so you can understand it and it will pay back in huge dividends. Face it, you're living in an age of computers. Know how to pimp them. Your Xbox 360's NAT could already be open without you realising. To check if it is, turn on your Xbox 360 and in the dashboard's My Xbox area, scroll right all the way to system settings. Select 'Network Settings.' Then select 'Test Xbox Live Connection.' The Xbox will run a bunch of tests, the last of which is NAT. It could be Strict, Moderate or Open. [b]If it is Open, the test won't even mention the word NAT.[/b] If so, stop reading this guide (either you have a Xbox live certified router or you have your Xbox directly connected to the modem. Please note that some, including my Xbox live certified router don't do their job of letting xbox live through the firewall). If it reads moderate or strict, then you are ripping yourself off. To get yourself an open NAT, it's not quite as simple as ticking a box. That's why this essay is here. The first thing you have to do is make your Xbox 360's local IP address 'static.' Then you have to open a back door in the router's software to your Xbox. If you don't know what a local IP address is, just think of your home network as a neighbourhood of mostly empty houses, labelled 1 through 255. For the vast majority of neighbourhoods like yours, the mailman lives at house 1 (he is the router) and he's the only contact with the outside world, which he accesses through the modem. If your computer, Xbox and laptop don't have a static IP, then they will live in a different house each time they're turned on and so need to tell the mailman where they live to be in contact with the outside world. If your Xbox or Computer has a static IP, they're always in the same house. The second step is to open ports on your router. It'll make teleporters between the mailman's house and your Xbox's. You can see that if the Xbox is always in a different house then the teleporter that goes to house 5 will only work some of time. Further on, each teleporter, or port opened, only works for one certain type of internet traffic AND can only be set to one device, or house. This number of the houses is the fourth in an "IP Address." The first three numbers don't ever change for the whole network. Example: 192.168.1.[b]1[/b] or 10.1.1.[b]1[/b]. So change only the last number for different devices on the network, between 1 and 255. Your router will most likely be on 1, but whatever it is on, it will never change. [b]PART A- STATIC IP[/b] Your computer and Xbox show a static IP as manually entering in IP settings and a non-static as them being set to automatic. Now you need to know all the technical numbers with three letter acronyms (you gotta love em) necessary- to get the same IP address everytime. The easiest way to get these numbers is to go to your computer's start menu, click on run, type in "cmd" (for windows 7 users, go to the start menu, click on the box to search for files or folders and type "cmd" and double click on the first result, thanks General Khazard). and then in the black box that pops up type "ipconfig /all". That's ipconfig space slash all. A rush of stuff will appear and you'll feel like a hacker. Look down towards the bottom and [b]write down on paper[/b] your IP Address (aka IPv4), Subnet Mask, Default Gateway and DNS Servers. Any typos here would be tragic so triple check that you have them right. I'll explain what each of these mean: [b]IP address- [/b] What I was talking about at the end of the introduction. This is your computer's local IP address. For your entire network the first three numbers, say 192.168.1, will be the same. The last identifies to the router what device on the network it is. [b]Subnet Mask-[/b] Scrambles your IP address from outsiders. [b]Default Gateway- [/b]The local IP address of your [b]router[/b]. [b] DNS servers- [/b] These are pass codes from your internet service provider. There will most likely be two. The first is called "Preferred/Primary DNS server" and the second is also known as the "Alternate/Secondary DNS server." Please note there may only be one. In this case please make the Secondary DNS the same number as the primary. Now that we've got these numbers, we can go and make all of the computers and Xboxes that you want to open ports for static. [b]How to make your Xbox 360's IP address Static:[/b] Now you are ready to go back to your Xbox 360's dashboard. In My Xbox, scroll right and select system settings, network settings, edit settings. There are two options- IP settings and DNS settings. Go into either, change the setting to manual and then enter all of the codes you have written down on your paper, with one difference. The last digit of the IP address needs to be changed to a number preferably between 50 and 250. Choose your favourite and write it down on the paper as your Xbox's Local IP address. While you're at it choose the numbers of your computer/s too, the houses that they will live in. If can reconnect to Xbox live, you have successfully made your Xbox IP's static. [b]Making your computer's IP address Static:[/b] (For this section, If you don't have WIndows XP or prefer pretty pictures over a wall of text, check [url=http://www.portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm] this out[/url]) Go to your computer, click start, control panel, network connections (classic view). You now have some icons that probably say "local area connection" and "wireless network connection." Ignore the "Internet Gateway Internet Connection" icon up further up. You need to select the one of local or wireless or otherwise that you use to connect to the internet. IF you don't know which one it is, go ahead and right click on one and 'disable' it. If your -blam!- stops downloading and you can't load up Google, it's probably the right one. Right click on the icon that gives you life, go 'properties', within the 'this connection uses the following items' embedded list scroll down to Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and then click on properties, just a little down and right. You will now see a window similar to how you entered in your codes on your xbox, except its all compact and lacks style. Here you will find if your IP address is static or roaming. If all the numbers are already filled in, its static and you should right down that computer's fourth number in its local IP address. This is old hat for you isn't it! If no numbers are filled in then do that yourself using all the numbers you wrote down on paper. Type in the DNS, Subnet, Gateway... it's all as easy as shooting a whale in barrel. If you're still connected to the internet then you haven't made any mistakes, because I sure didn't. [Edited on 01.08.2011 4:54 AM PST]