How do you remove a restricted NAT?

Question

Whenever I am playing online games (Halo, Starcraft, etc.) they all mention that my internet has a restricted NAT setting. Because of it, many times I can't connect with lots of my friends over Xbox Live, and other games via the internet. When I researched it, I found that it's a security measure, but but a rather annoying one at that. If I interpreted it correctly, it constantly changes my IP Address, making it difficult for people to use my internet. I want it gone: Can anyone help?

Internet provider is At&t and I use a Linksys router with a Motorola modem if that helps in any way. I've already tried calling At&t about this, they can't do anything to help me.

Answer 1

your NAT is most likely on your own linksys router. Your ISP provides a single public routable address and your linksys creates an internal network using a private address range that allows you to connect several internal devices however once it routes past your linksys router all of the internal devices will appear to the internet as the same address.



It has more to do with allowing multiple devices to connect with a single IP address than security.. although it does help with security since it hides devices behind it.



Personally I wouldn't even try to hook a computer directly to the internet without a restricted firewall in place that blocks those services. They aren't worth the security risks of leaving them open. If you really want to do that you will need to create a mapping for inbound connections from the internet to your computer. This is really a bad idea to do it blindly. The safer choice is to determine specifically what external computers need to connect to which specific internal ports on your computer and grant a very restricted listing of what you need to allow rather than simply opening the entire world to your machine.

Answer 2

Restricted Nat

Answer 3

Good advice from Samantha and to open the specific ports you need, Port Forward should be able to help.

http://portforward.com/

You choose what game it is and your modem (or one similar if yours isn't listed) and follow the instructions. If you can't find instructions to work with your modem, you can ask in the forum for help.



NAT is not actually about constantly changing your IP address. It's about changing the IP from the one used on the internet to the one your computer uses when data is being sent here and there. I'll quote a section from Samantha because it's well put (best answer for her? :-) )

"Your ISP provides a single public routable address and your linksys creates an internal network using a private address range that allows you to connect several internal devices"

For the single public address, assigned by your ISP, visit http://whatismyip.com

For the private address of your computer, open a command prompt window (black window you have to type in) and type ipconfig and press Enter. It's probably something like 192.168.1.3 and has a line underneath that says the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0



"however once it routes past your linksys router all of the internal devices will appear to the internet as the same address."

Your router takes care of working out what IP address to use as it sends data back and forth. That's NAT. NAT stands for Network Address Translation, in other words, swapping the IP address being used for the one needed for the next trip the data is taking - your router is doing that.



Your modem needs telling what to do with traffic that comes in and that's the port forwarding part. Visit Port Forward for help on that and/or ask in the game forums.

Answer 4

I had the exact same problem, what you need to do is go into your router settings with your xbox connected, as every router is different i cant tell you exact instructions but look for the list of connected devices and note down the ip address of your xbox, next look for something called the "default dmz server" or similar and enter your xboxs ip address, click appy, this will turn off NAT filtering for your xbox :)



Found these linksy instructions:



1) Log into your router web interface. This is usually 192.168.1.1 on the linksys routers. When the 'User name and Password' prompts appear, leave the User name field blank/empty and type admin (in lowercase) for the Password and click 'OK'. (that's the default Linksys interface login)



2) After you login, select the security tab located on the top menu bar of the web interface.



3) Towards the bottom of the screen you should see DMZ. In the pull down box select Enable and in the DMZ Host IP address 192.168.1.____ inter the IP address of the computer you wish to open up to the internet. (This should be a static IP address)



4) Apply the settings and you should be done.

Answer 5

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I suggest you swap your 3com router for a PC running a Linux firewall/router software setup This will be more flexible and powerful than the firmware running in the 3com. You will be able to do all the web filtering, NAT routing, firewalling etc, all within a cheap PC running Linux and some extra software. You will have a much more scalable solution. The workstation PC won't need special proxy settings, so that removes the possibility to bypass the proxy.