Ok I will try my best to describe the problem as best as possible.
Ok 2 weeks ago I was hosting a 1 on 1 match with one of my friends on xbox live gears of war. I was host and we had played 3 rounds when all of a sudden he dropped from my game. Subsequent private chat invites and game invites failed for both of us. whether he was host or I was host.
Now we have been able to play with each other for the last 2 years with no problems, and we have never changed our network setup.
So here is my setup before the problem started. My ISP Provider as well as my friend. www.diodecom.net, I use their wireless internet and he uses their cable - I am using a Linksys wrt54gl router - he is using a Dlink di604. I have my router wired to my pc and my xbox 360. I do not use the wireless feature, except for my zune and my dad who lives next door will sometimes use his labtop.
I had a static ip address assigned to my computer and my 360. I had ports opened for xbox live, 88 and 3074 assigned to my 360's static ip, UPNP disabled and I also had my 360's ip in DMZ. Xbox live connection test always passed and open NAT.
After this happened, even though no settings were changed, my NAT turned to moderate. I checked my settings, everything checked out ok so I reset my router, pc, and 360. ran the test again, open nat. But still unable to connect.
So I then kept all above settings the same, and checked UPNP. again same results, open nat and unable to private chat or join my friends games, and vice versa.
I then decided to get rid of the static ip addresses on my pc and 360 and had my router auto assigned. I disabled DMZ, and disabled the ports. I then Enabled UPNP and QOS. Assigned my 360's mac address in the qos, and put the ports for xbox live in for qos. Again same results. Xbox live tests pass, open nat, still can't connect.
Now another friend - who lives right next door,uses the same ISP as me - wireless, he also uses a dlink di604 router. He' cant join my private chat/games either. But He also can't join my other friends either. Vice versa. They have static ip's assigned, ports forwarded, xbox live tests pass and open NAT.
I do not have this probelm with anyone else on my friends list, the only way we can even play together is if it is a random host, none of us can be host or else we are not able to join each other.
Update we are finding more people now who are using the same ISP and are unable to connect to each other. Connecting to somebody else with a different ISP works fine. The idea of this being a router problem is diminishing.
I have called my ISP and am waiting for a call back, until then can someone post if there is anything else I can try. I have also tried a direct connection bypassing my router. and it still does not work.
Oh my current router setting is. I have a manual static ip address assigned to my 360, that is outside of the dhcp range of my router. DNS is obtained automatically. DMZ is enabled. xbox live Ports 3074 and 88 are open. Tests pass, NAT open.
Again we were unable to connect private chat or hosting a game. All 3 of us to each other. We all tried different router configurations before xbox live went down for maintence today.
