There was a time when I wanted to make a blog about video games, and this is that blog. I’m not really posting anymore, so there’s no point in this, but I can’t quite bring myself to closing this blog.
You figure that, since your Xbox does see and connect to the internet, everything’s fine, and so did I; turns out that it is not actually normal for the console to hang for thirty seconds every time you try and join an Xbox Live game. I’d read about this before, but never bothered to set it up, and it does make online gaming that much smoother.
The link above has a detailed walkthrough, but the quick technical brief is: give your console a fixed IP address, and forward ports udp 88, udp 3074 and tcp 3074. Voilà , instant matchmaking.