One of the keys to playing online with your Xbox Series X or Series S is having a perfectly configured network environment . A poor configuration can completely ruin your online gaming experience or even prevent you from accessing servers. If you've noticed that you're unable to create an online game, or even join one, with your next-gen console, stick with this post. Here, we'll explain everything you need to know to connect your console to the internet and what settings you need to configure so that your machine can access and organize online games without any problems.
The importance of opening ports
If you're experiencing issues like being able to play multiplayer games but not being able to hear your friends via voice chat, or being unable to create a game as the host, you're most likely experiencing a NAT problem on Xbox Live, or in other words, you probably don't have the necessary ports open on your router.
This is a recurring problem with each console generation since multiplayer gaming began to take hold in the late 90s , so you've probably already encountered this issue. The good news is that we're going to explain step-by-step how to resolve these minor annoyances of a technology that desperately needs to be more transparent and accessible for players.
What is NAT and why do I have it moderated?
NAT is a network address translation protocol that is responsible for defining the destination of an Internet connection. If the equipment is not capable of translating the address, the request is lost and communication is not established, hence the problems can be quite random and sometimes difficult to identify.
Your Xbox console can tell you what type of NAT you have, and for this you must follow the following steps:
- Settings > General > Network Settings > Test NAT Type
The console will perform some connection tests and determine the type of NAT you currently have. The results can be the following:
- Open NAT: You have the best NAT type. You will be able to create and host games and connect to others created by other users regardless of what type of NAT they have.
- moderate NAT: You will be able to play with some users who have the same NAT level as you, but sometimes they won't let you host the game.
- strict NAT: Your only option is to play player-created multiplayer games with Open NAT. You will never be able to host the game.
- NAT not available: is the worst case. You will not be able to enter chat rooms or connect to many of the games that offer multiplayer on Xbox Live.
To give you an idea, these are the connection possibilities between an Xbox (A) and a second Xbox (B). Depending on the NAT that you and your friend have, you will be able to connect or not.
NAT issues appear when the Xbox cannot connect to the Xbox Live servers correctly. Luckily, in most cases there is a solution, and all you have to do is open the ports.
Possible errors that may indicate that you must make changes to the NAT, and that Microsoft contemplates, are the following:
- NAT type: Not available, is displayed when nothing is detected in current network status, within the option Red.
- Cannot get an IP address appears after running Test multiplayer connection on the screen Red.
- You will see the error code 0x89231906 when you try and fail to join a group chat session.
- Double NAT detected could also be displayed inside current network status, on the screen Red.
Where do the ports open?
Network ports are managed by your home router. Just as this device provides internet access to all your devices, it also determines which ports are open to different destinations. This is simply a preventative measure; the fewer ports you have open, the fewer security problems you'll face.
So remember that your Xbox is not in charge of managing this NAT, so you will have to adjust the changes in the router that your operator has provided you, or the one that you installed yourself a few years ago.
How do they open?
This is a subject that can be somewhat complicated since, although in general terms the settings are always the same, not all routers have the same settings menus and configuration functions available.
The best solution is to search online for how to open the ports on your router model or ask your internet service provider. In all cases, you'll need to access your router by entering its IP address into a web browser on your computer. You can find your router's IP address in your Xbox settings under the following menu:
- Settings > General > Network Settings > Advanced Settings
The data corresponding to the gateway will, in most cases, be the IP of your router, and that number is what you will have to type in the address bar of the browser. Typically it will be one of these two values:
From there, you'll need to access your router's username and password and find the port forwarding option where you specify which ports you want to open to a particular IP address (the one corresponding to your Xbox). To avoid future problems, it's best to assign your Xbox a static IP address . This way, if you ever restart your router or experience a power outage, your Xbox won't receive a new IP address via DHCP (otherwise, any port forwarding settings you've applied will no longer work).
To configure a fixed IP on your Xbox you can do it directly from the console by entering the following menu:
- Settings > General > Network Settings > Advanced Settings > IP Settings > Manual
Ideally, you should use the same IP address you saw on the "Advanced Settings" screen. This way, you won't overwrite any other IP addresses on your local network. This ensures your Xbox will always have that IP address and never lose it , allowing you to configure the ports to remain open for that local IP. At this point, it's important to clarify that you should assign a static IP address to your Xbox that falls within the DHCP range . Why? DHCP is the system your router uses to automatically assign an IP address to every device that connects to it. Imagine having to do this manually every time you connect your phone to a router. It would be absurd, right? The router's DHCP server has a range of addresses it can assign (you can view and change this in your router's settings). If you give your Xbox Series X/S an IP address within the DHCP range, the router might assign that IP address to another device when the console is turned off. In that case, you won't be able to connect the console to the internet while that address is in use.
In this manual configuration, the values ​​that you will have to fill in are IP, Subnet Mask, Gateway and DNS. Use the values ​​you saw on the "Advanced settings" screen as a reference so as not to make a mistake with any value.
Ports used by Xbox Live
The list of ports that you need to open so that your connection with the Xbox servers is perfect, are the following:
- Port 88 (UDP)
- Port 3074 (UDP and TCP)
- Port 53 (UDP and TCP)
- Port 80 (TCP)
- Port 500 (UDP)
- Port 3544 (UDP)
- Port 4500 (UDP)
Keep in mind that some games use additional ports, so it would be a good idea to check some of the most popular games to see if you need to open any extra ports for everything to work perfectly. Some of the ports used by popular games are:
- Call of duty warzone
- TCP: 3074
- UDP: 88, 500, 3074-3075, 3544, 4500
- Fortnite
- TCP: 433, 3074, 5222
- UDP: 88, 433, 500, 3074, 3544, 4500
- FIFA 22 coins
- TCP: 3074, 3659
- UDP: 88, 500, 3074, 3544, 3659, 4500
- GTA V
- TCP: 80, 53
- UDP: 88, 53, 3544, 500, 4500
How to open the ports to two Xboxes in the same house?
Your case may be quite special, but it is not strange at all. If you have more than one Xbox at home (such as a Series X and a Series S), you could have the problem of having to choose which console will have the ports open on the router, since the router can only forward the same port to a single device. This would end up causing one of them to have problems downloading updates, finding games and playing cooperative games, so it would become a nightmare for parents who have several children at home with two consoles to share. The solution? It is in Microsoft's own console, since in the network configuration we can choose an alternative port to which to direct the Xbox Live requests and the console's internet access.
To do it we will only have to access the console configuration and in the network settings choose the port that best interests us. The steps to follow are those:
- Enter the section Console configuration.
- Inside the section General, access the section Network Configuration.
- Choose Advanced settings.
- And then in Alternative port selection.
- Choose Manual.
- And in the menu that will appear on the screen you will be able to select between a series of preset ports for your console to connect to the Xbox servers.
Remember that this chosen port will be the one that you will have to open on your router so that all requests go to the IP of the console in which you manually selected the port. Thus, you will be able to have two and more consoles in the same home network without moderate NAT problems or any other type of problem related to network ports.