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    Game console taking your port for a Steam game? Try this!

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Gaming
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    • A
      autotalon
      last edited by

      I'm not sure how often anyone would have this issue, but it's a real problem for me that I solved.  Typically, it's best to allow game consoles to use UPNP if possible, as they dont always use the same groups, and at least in the case of the Xbox 360 if there were two consoles on the LAN the only way I have seen to allow them both to connect is UPNP.  Now, the port they use by default is 3074.  The problem with this is a LOT of PC games use 3074 as well.  From what I could tell, Xbox Live does have alternate ports, but they only seem to work when assigned via UPNP.  There's an easy way make sure any consoles will not use ports you already have assigned.  In my case, I have only done this for port 3074, but it could be done for any/all ports.  You can even specify the exact range UPNP is allowed to give out.  Aside from the exclusions I set mine to all assignable ports, but you can do either.

      To do this, go to Services -> UPNP and NATPMP

      Scroll down the user specified permissions.  Here is a screenshot of the basic setup.  You'd want to modify it for your lan addressing scheme.

      If you notice in the top rule it looks like I have denied one specific address from getting 3074.  That's incorrect.  What I am actually doing is denying every address above 128 from using the port.  The reason I've done it this way is because my PC has a port forward rule set up for 3074 to it specifically.  To be as granular and concise as possible, I made sure that any PC could use the port if needed.  In addition, the same thing can be done in firewall rules to only apply them to specific IP ranges.  This is useful in the case of Outbound NAT in particular, because game consoles do not support dynamic outbound ports.  So to get around this without disabling it globally, I created a rule that sets static port for the 192.168.1.128/25 network.  The LAN isnt actually subnetted in any way, but for the purpose of firewall setup the rules are written to only apply to the top portion of the LAN.  My DHCP scope only hands out addresses from 50-120, and I use static leases to always give the game consoles addresses above 128.

      This is what i've found works best to get game consoles working 100%.  It's impractical to forward ports manually for consoles, as the range of ports is very large, random, and in the case of Nintendo consoles, undocumented so there is no real definitive range of ports.  They dont seem to require ports to be forwarded, in that case Outbound NAT is the issue that needs sorted, but even still security practices are still important.  If you wanted to lock the network down, it'd be very easy to change the second line to specify what IP addresses are allowed to use UPNP as well.
      upnp.PNG_thumb
      upnp.PNG

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      • F
        FlameBaal7
        last edited by

        now i like to play steam more than the other.

        sbobet

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        • X
          xpoundmystoma
          last edited by

          I FINALLY FIXED IT (well at least for me) I am going to screenshot all of my settings. I have tested on both consoles; able to play any multiplayer games at the same time with open NAT. Nothing was changed in Outbound NAT rules. Lmk if this worked for you

          2016-02-23_19-13-31.png
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          • A
            autotalon
            last edited by

            As a small update the last couple games ive played forward 3074 themselves with UPNP however I'm now trying to see how to get multiple PCs to do it.  What consoles do you have that you had to mess with the NAT settings?  I'd rather change outbound for one port than NAT functionality for all of them

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