Firewall ports that must be open to use your Xbox 360 console as a Media Center Extender

This article describes the firewall ports that you must open for an Xbox 360 console to work correctly with a computer that is running Windows Media Center. It also contains information about where to find information that describes how to open these ports.

Media Center Extenders, such as an Xbox 360 console, use network ports to communicate over the network with computers that are running Windows Media Center. Sometimes, a firewall that is running on the Windows Media Center-based computer will block Media Center Extender programs from using these ports.

If you use a third-party firewall (a firewall that is not a Microsoft firewall), you may have to manually configure the firewall to give specific programs access to the ports that they need. The firewall manufacturer may prompt you to configure the firewall by using one of the following methods:

• Configure the firewall for the specific program. In other words, you would configure the firewall to give only specific programs access to certain ports.
• Modify the specific ports that the program uses.

To configure a firewall, you must know the name of the program, the ports that the program needs to use, and the direction of the communication signal.

The following table lists the specific information about Media Center Extender programs that you must know to configure some non-Microsoft firewalls:



The procedure for manually configuring a firewall is different for each firewall model and for each firewall manufacturer. For more information about how to configure your firewall, see the documentation that came with your firewall.

For more information about how to set up a firewall to work with a Windows Media Center-based computer, please visit the following Microsoft Web site: