Help me out with an issue connecting to xbox live

First of all, I've never had any issues connecting Live. Neither has my cousin, which is who i play with the most. However, periodically (moreso lately for some reason) we have been having problems connecting to each other. "Cannot connect to xbox live party there may be network issues" or whatever the message says. Also it will not allow either of us to connect to each other's game in progress.

Last night we were having the issue and he did the whole port forward thing, still didn't work. So then I forwarded my ports. From there, everything worked just fine and we were able to cruise around Liberty City with no issues.

So just now we try again, mind you nothing has changed from last night...nothing, and same problem. Can't connect. Can anyone help me out here? I don't understand why it would just not work. Not to mention why in the past it works probably 75% of the time.

Thanks

Same kinda thing has been happening to me, lots of funny things happening in the past week or so when my live has beeen perfecgt for the year and a half ive had it. The computer with the router on it and my laptop works great, but my live sometimes wont connect to parties and private chat lags constantly with all my friends. It seems to get better sometimes than just go downhill again, I wish i could help both of us.

the funny thing is it's happened to me all along but only with my cousin. and only like i said like 25% of the time or even less it will not connect. I've read all about the port forwarding and thought that fixed it, which i found out was not true earlier today. It's just odd and annoying that one day out of the week it wont work. like, i bet tomorrow it will work just fine. but when it happens it sucks

I also noticed that after i had forwarded the ports my nat became strict. anyone have any insight at all?