NAT type.....

I have spent hours on the phone and computer trying to change my NAT type on my router. I am by no means a computer tech, I just watch DIY videos on youtube. What is a NAT type, I do not really know, but mine is NAT type 3. When ever I check my connection on my PS3, it says "When the NAT type is type 3, chat or communication features of games may be restricted." It is hard to hear or talk sometimes, but gameplay seemed good enough.

That was untill SuperTeeJ and I, would try to game together online. We could never join into each others lobbies. First it was Little Big Planet, now Red Dead Redemption. Thing has happened with out friends online with Call of Duty and various other games. Not all the time though, SuperTeeJ was almost impossible to play with. So I called up Sony to see why the fuck I didn't have the best in online gaming. The Sony rep said that it's because I had a NAT type 3 and Playstation is more compatible with type 2 or 1. He said I need to get a hold of my internet provider and router manufacturer, they would have to change it. Then he gave me a bunch of TCP and UDP port numbers.

At this point it was too late to call Telus. A would have to do it in the morning. Now we are at today I called telus and they lead me through my router settings and all they could do was change one option and that didn't work. I call the router manufacturer Gigaset, the guy said he was not the right department and transferred me to the right department which is only open from 3am to noon. He also told me to go to portforward.com. I went there and it seemed really helpful and could fix my problem. I had me back again in my router setting and this time changing ports addresses and making my IP address static. I could change all of the ports I need to except for one, this I think is why that didn't work.

My last resort was to call Geek Squad and ask some questions. They were surprised I want to change my NAT type, Apparently NAT type 3 has been the norm for routers for the last couple of years. Find a place that sells old routers would be hard. He said he has a new router and his Playstation works fine with it. He has a Linksys E300, valued around 140 bucks. I told him how Playstation is more compatible with NAT type 2 or 1. His response was that the Linksys router is most likely backwards compatible. I checked out the stats online for the E3000 and it mentioned a lot about online gaming, dropping Playstation and X Boxs' names.

By the sounds of it, I am going to buy a better router then what I have now. Hopefully that fixes my problem. For now I guess NAT type 3 will have to work.