Smart Hub 2 port forwarding and moderate NAT

[loanhead]

Hello

I received the Smart Hub 2 today and upgraded from my Home Hub 6. I had port forwarding setup for 2x Xboxes on the HH6 and it worked fine. I’d play Call of Duty and have Open NAT every game consistently for years.

I recently got a PC (running Windows 11) and started to game on it. Since I had to set everything up on the Smart Hub as new I decided to put port forwarding rules in place for the PC instead of the Xboxes.

I set up a static IP for the PC first. Turned off UPnP in the SH2. Then in the router opened  the following ports.

TCP:

3074, 4000, 6112-6119, 20500, 20510, 27014-27050, 28960

UDP:

3074, 3478, 4379-4380, 6112-6119, 20500, 20510, 27000-27031, 27036, 28960

taken from here: https://support.activision.com/articles/ports-used-for-call-of-duty-games

My NAT is stuck at moderate. I’ve tried reboots of the PC and router. I’m not double NAT. I used a site to check the ports were open and they all appear to be.

Ive checked the firewall on the SH2 and its set to default.

Im not running any anti virus, only windows defender, and it doesn’t appear to be blocking Call of Duty or the PC Xbox apps, it’s set to allow them both.

i tried disabling SH2 and windows defender completely (just to test with no intention of leaving them off) and NAT would still show as moderate.

The only thing that allowed an open NAT was setting the PC to be in the DMZ.

Not sure what else to try? Any help or advice much appreciated.

[licquorice]

I have never got my head around this concept of various classes of NAT that the games fraternity use.

NAT is NAT, Network Address Translation. Either your public IP address gets translated to a private IP address or it doesn't, there are no shades of grey.

What the games fraternity mean by 'moderate' or 'open' NAT, I have no idea.

Putting a device in the DMZ simply forwards all ports to the private address rather than individually selected ports. Maybe there are other ports that need to be forwarded.