Update – Sunday July 27th 2008

Some help/resources links  about the xbox live chat issue:

Microsoft: Connection tests: NAT
TeamXbox Forum: Can’t Play With Friends on Xbox Live

Update – Sunday July 20th 2008

On June 20th, exactly a month back, i wrote an e-mail to Microsoft Live Support team asking for help on this issue.

So many of you have gone through this and seeing my incoming stats to this entry is just very worrying.

After explaining the problem with as many details as possible, giving them the link to this entry and pointing out to your comments, i kind of expected them to send me a nice answer that would help us fix this issue.

Instead, i got this:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your email. In order to respond effectively to your email we need to investigate further. Therefore please contact the Xbox Customer Support team .

Kind Regards,

<Lily

Xbox Support

www.xbox.com/support/contact/

Ummm…pardon me,miss Lily, but didn’t i just contacted the support team? Aren’t you supposed to assign this to someone in your team and have an answer sent to me about the issue’s status?

See, i do service desk and i wouldn’t dare sending this  confusing e-mail to my customers.

Are you looking into my issue or why are you asking me to contact the Support team when i just did it?

Thanks anyway dear. I will contact you again if that’s how things work.

Recap: My e-mail to Microsoft Xbox support was unsuccessful even though i gave them the best possible reason to look into this: It’s paying customers.

Maybe if i try again it’ll work.

If any of you have contacted the Support for this matter, please let us know what their answer was? Is there any fix for the connection besides the fix i posted below last year?



April 26 2007

Many people on the Xbox Live are having problems connecting to a friend’s game, such as GRAW 2 or Rainbow Six – Vegas, and they even can’t connect to each other via the voice chat.

So, how can that be fixed?

There is a solution and here’s how I fixed my problem:

1) If you are on a wireless router, and using a wireless card to connect to Xbox Live, then you might want to consider putting your 360 on wire, because connections on wires are more stable.

If your router is not compatible with the Xbox 360, then you might consider upgrading.

A list of compatible routers can be found on .

I have a US Robotics Access Point Router and I hooked up to it a D-Link switch with 5 extra ports, then connected my 360 to it. Since then, is all stable.

If your NAT (Network Address Translation) is set on Strict or Moderate, you need to open it.

To do that, go to your router’s control panel and look up your details.

You’ll probably need to open some ports for your 360, so you need to go to and look up your router, then look up the Xbox 360 ports that you need to open and how to do it.

It’s all there.

Quick note: In order to make this work, the ports you’re forwarding, must reach the Xbox’s IP address, and that is why you’ll have to put it on static IP….or it won’t work.

2) If your Xbox isn’t on a static IP address, then it’s time for you to change that.

First, go to your Dashboard and then System. Open the Network Settings,then Edit Settings.

Now, write down the IP that is already assigned, along with your Primary DNS Server, Subnet Mask and the Default Gateway details.

If you wish, you can add as a Secondary DNS Server, one of the following :

208.67.220.220

208.67.222.222

These DNS servers are from http://www.opendns.com and they are a bit faster.

Now, Click on Edit Settings again and set everything on Manual, then insert the details you just wrote down.

When everything is done, test your Live connection and see if is all working fine.

Since i changed to Static IP and hooked up the D-Link switch, i have no problems anymore.

Hope that helps some of you.

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