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    Multiple Nintendo Switches behind NAT

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    • E
      eigrp
      last edited by

      I’m trying to figure out how multiple Nintendo Switches would work behind a single public/global address.

      The pinned instructional here from jimp entitled "Nintendo Switch - Needs static port on its outbound NAT” does a great job of explaining how to setup a static source port configuration for NAT. I tried it myself and, sure enough, NAT Type B.

      However, it doesn’t seem like that would work very well for multiple Switches playing the same game. If you simply created a static port rule for each Switch on the VLAN, the game server would end up receiving packets with the same IP source address and source port number from all of them. Would pfSense even allow this? What am I missing here? At least from a layer-3/4 perspective, the game clients would be indistinguishable to the server.

      I know some games are better than others in terms of NAT traversal. It may be that static source ports aren’t even required in every situation. After all, the Switch’s connection test is not a game in itself…at least not a very fun one. But for those that do require static source ports, it would seem they aren't going to work if more than one local Switch is involved.

      Has anyone been down this road? What has worked and what hasn’t with >1 Switch in play?

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      • E
        eigrp @eigrp
        last edited by

        Well, at least I didn't ask an easy one. ☺

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        • I
          ikra
          last edited by

          Exactly😂

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