I finally broke down and purchased an XBOX 360 with Halo 3. It is an incredible improvement over the first system, and is backwards compatible. The first intriguing thing about the system from a networking perspective is their idea of “Open”, “Moderate”, and “Closed” NAT. I didn’t know that this was possible, but after a few sniffing experiments later I learned a few things:
- XBOX Live uses port 3047
- XBOX Live uses UDP
- XBOX Live thinks open NAT means that port and protocol is forwarded to your XBOX through the NAT device
This leads me to the conclusion that the XBOX Live and Vista ready devices are just engineered to provide holes in your network. I suppose this is fine for most, but what if you want that security back?