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Seems like a complete load of cow manure. What exactly is so special about an xbox 360 that it needs a "microsoft certified" router?


It likes to connect to other people also behind routers. And as any person who has ever tried to use file transfers via instant messengers can tell you, routers are a pain to deal with for direct connections.

I did find this page that explains the different NAT types the 360 will spit out in the diagnostics screen. Might help a bit.

The certified routers are ones that people at Microsoft went out and bought, then tested to ensure every small function of XBox Live works across it. They apparently spent a lot of time on this after seeing so many issues with the first XBox when they launched the Live service. Having come from a support background, I can understand why they would try to make an easy to identify symbol on routers to tell people to look for. The easier it is for people to get a compatible router, the less phone calls their support staff have to deal with.

I still am amazed at people who can actually figure out low end problems like this and come up with solutions. I'm still of the opinion that networks are half voodoo magic. Especially when things like a simple network buffer setting on some nForce based cards that was enable by default was causing problems only in very specific situations in World of Warcraft. My old roomate got hit by this, and basically this setting caused the character load cycle to not complete when he entered the game, but only if his character had a certain amount of items in his inventory. Again, network voodoo.