Question Opening NAT's on two separate devices on the same port?

[swoo]

Hello everyone,

I am currently trying to open port 3074 via port forwarding so that both my PC and my Xbox can access their respective services with Open NAT's. First, yes, I am aware that I can't open the same port for 2 separate devices. To my understanding, you should try to port forward a port on the router or switch you're devices are trying to connect to but I tried setting the IP to my router and that didn't work. I've also tried UPNP and am not interested in running either device under a DMZ. When I try to set the port forwarding rules to the router, then the NAT is moderate on both Xbox and PC. When I assign said ruled to the PC or Xbox, then whichever one I have specifically opened that port for then Opens the NAT for that device.

My network uses the TP-LINK Deco XE75 Pro as the router and Cox is my ISP. Currently I am just switching the rules assignment depending on which ever device I am trying to use. For what it is worth, I do not need to use both devices simultaneously so if this is my only solution so be it. What I am hoping to do is to have it set and then forget about it and not have to constantly switch it back and forth.

I wanted to also add that yes, I have also tried the move where I make the internal ports 3074 on both devices while the external on one is 3074 and the other is 3075 and I still have the issue. I have tried these settings with UPNP on and off and honestly, I think I have hit my know-how here. I know some folks are going to say that TP-Link and or Mesh solutions are still kind of shit (that's fair) but I needed this solution for the size home I live in to get wifi everywhere. Is this a TP-Link issue or am I missing something?

 

[lantis3]

No, you can't do port forwarding to multi IP addresses.

However, according to this youtuber, there are 4 VPN providers that support port forwarding.

So you should be able to do port forwarding for one device without vpn, and one with port forwarding with vpn.

No personal experience.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3oCp60Z6_k

 

[bill001g]

The reason mesh or wifi solutions are bad for gaming is very different than port forwarding. Wifi is bad because it is subject to randoms data loss and delay due to interference. Games unlike pretty much any other kind of data is extremely susceptible to these issues. It pretty much is your worst combination of technology but if you have no other option it is just something recognize and live with.

It seems you have a pretty good grasp of what your problem is and it also seems you know how to get the port forwarding setup.
You are actually very lucky a lot of people who come here have no clue how this works and even worst many times do not have a public IP to begin with.

UPnP is the so called solution for this. It is "suppose" to do what you are doing manually. It should also work in theory as you describe...use port 1111 external and forward it to machine 1 port 3074 and use port 2222 and forward it to machine 2 port 3074.

This method works fine for many true game servers, say minecraft as a very common example. The problem comes mostly with game consoles...or more whatever matchmaking software is being run by the game company. This central server needs to keep track of what external IP and port every machine in everyone house is using. This is made even worse on games that attempt to change the ports themselves adding another layer of confusion.

I really don't know why this many times does not work on consoles. Although I have never attempted UPnP I have used the trick of manually setting ports to run multiple machines and it works ok.

I don't know what to recommend. You are limited that you only have 1 public IP address and you can only use a particular port number to map to 1 internal machine.


Are you 100% sure you actually need to have any port forwarding. Most times this is used by games that do not have central hosting servers and are using one of the game consoles to act as a server for other players.