Port Forwarding Two Xboxes

You have one router and two Xboxes.

If two of you in the house want to play an online game at the same time, the following might sound familiar:

• increased lag
• difficulty joining parties
• choppy or nonexistent voice chat
• trouble playing games online in general

To get your games running smoothly, you will need to improve your network connection. Especially the connection for the second Xbox.

Gaming With Two Xboxes On One Router

It all starts with NAT or Network Address Translation. This is a technology that allows more than one computer to be on the Internet at the same time using the same IP Address. The type of NAT you use determines how easily your console can talk to another console across the Internet.

There are three different NAT types:

1. Open - This is the best connection. If your NAT type is Open you can connect with any other NAT type. This means a better gaming experience.
2. Moderate - If you have Moderate NAT you can only connect to other consoles also using Moderate or Open. If you have Moderate NAT and your friend has strict you are going to experience problems.
3. Strict - If you have Strict NAT you can only connect to Open NAT consoles. Strict NAT is extremely restrictive and will result in frustration.

To have the very best connection and best online gaming you need to have Open NAT. To do this you need to use port forwarding.

Getting Open NAT

To attain open NAT on one Xbox you simply forward port 3074 (UDP and TCP). To get open NAT when you have more than one Xbox on your router you need to use a second port. This is where the problem lies.

Xbox has allowed the use of port 3074 (UDP and TCP) only. However, if you have another Xbox console you cannot forward that same port to the second console. A port only allows one set of data to pass through at a time. This works great for the primary Xbox but the secondary Xbox will lag and have trouble playing an online game in general.

To solve this problem Activision has made it so you can port your second Xbox to 3075 (UDP and TCP). If you have a third console go ahead and port 3076 (UDP and TCP) to that one.

For more information about port forwarding visit our Ultimate Guide to Forwarding Ports in Your Router.

Does this solve connectivity issues?

Will this solve all connectivity issues with two Xboxes? The short answer is possibly. This solution is confirmed to work for Activision games but why not try it with other games, it may just work.

For help solving networking issues visit our Networking Help Center.