Help!!! -- XBOX Live Not Connecting to University Ethernet

[NeutiquamErro]

Hey, all! I'm new to the forums, and I thought you guys might be able to help me with an issue I'm having.

I recently bought an XBOX 360 along with Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4. In my little dorm room, I created an XBOX Live account and purchased a month of Gold Member access. I booted up my copy of COD4 and went to play an online match, but ended up sitting in the game lobby for 30 minutes, "waiting for players to join." I tried my copy of Halo 3. Same thing... I just sat in the game lobby searching for match, without any luck.

This last Thanksgiving, I went home and tried to play online on my home connection. Boom, it worked like a champ.

I'm guessing there's some sort of gaming firewall on my university connection. I'm confused, though, because 1) I can sign on to XBOX Live without issue... I just can't play matches on it. And 2) I used to play Battlefield 2 on the university connection all the time. What gives?

Is there a way to bypass that firewall somehow? Is there another problem I might have overlooked? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! You guys rock.

- N. Erro

 

[Mackilroy]

Were you playing Battlefield 2 on the PC? Also, have you tried testing your connection through the Xbox 360's Live setup?

 

[SilentPanda]

When you do the Network connection test what does it say in regards to your NAT? There are 3 ways it can be; open, moderate, and strict. Open is the best of course. If it's strict or moderate you very well could wait a long while and never get connect to a game. This is most likely your issue. You'd have to contact your University help desk to sort it out if they even can (or care).

Read up on it here.

 

[NeutiquamErro]

Were you playing Battlefield 2 on the PC?

Yes, sir.

Also, have you tried testing your connection through the Xbox 360's Live setup?

I believe so. When I run "Test Xbox Live Connection," the results are:
Network Adapter - Wired
IP Address - Confirmed
DNS - Confirmed
MTU - Confirmed
ICMP - Confirmed
XBOX Live - Connected
NAT - Open

I can connect to XBOX Live without issue (I must do so in order to sign on my Live Profile)... I just can't enter any Live matches.

 

[SilentPanda]

If your NAT is open then that's really really weird you can't connect to Live matches.

 

[JayMan8081]

When I was on my university network we had to authenticate to get internet access. Basically this meant that I had to connect my xbox via a crossover cable to a second NIC in my computer and then use my computer to authenticate on the university network. This would allow me to play over xbox live. Maybe you might have to do something similar?

 

[NeutiquamErro]

Hmmm... Might you be able to give more detail on that process?

 

[JayMan8081]

I was using a desktop PC in my dorm room and we had a specific website that we went to to enter a username and password for the Campus network. This would allow us access to the network for a 2 hour period. Basically I put a second network card in my PC and set up a bridge between the two cards so that the second network card would simply pass all it's traffic to the first one. I would then authenticate for network access like normal and then boot up my xbox and connect it to the second network card with a crossover cable (a regular network cable can be used with the 360).