Background: I’ve been trying to get my xbox 360 to connect to my on-campus network (I live in a dorm with wireless internet). I could never get the wifi or the direct ethernet cable to work because it would recognize my 360 as having a separate IP address from my laptop and not allow more than one unique connection per student account. Manually changing the two IP addresses to match didn’t work either.
So last night, I plugged my ethernet cable from my 360 into my laptop and set internet sharing on, to essentially get my laptop to act as a router for the wifi. Lo and behold, I connected to xbox live, but after trying a few matches of Halo 3 online, I found that I would end up timing out and disconnecting every couple minute, and when I was able to play, my connection strength on the 360 was only at 3/4 of its full potential.
So my question is…would a fairly cheap router (say, this one) work any better than using my laptop this way? I’m not totally sure what advantages a router has over just using network sharing, so would it be any faster or more reliable?
(If it matters, my onboard wifi card on my laptop gives me the value ‘802.11n’, I’m not totally sure what that means in regards to the different protocols but I’ve heard it’s important)
A router can fix this problem if it’s configured properly to allow the 360 ports to be forwarded to its local IP address (usually 192.168.x.x) from the WAN. Google xbox 360 port forwarding for more info on that.
I don’t know anything about that particular router, but have had success with D-Link and Linksys. Hope that helps.
No, you are going to need this one (just kidding).
According to page 41 (“Wireless ISP” - Table 13) of the manual, if you are connecting to a wireless ISP, then that’s what it uses the antenna for – meaning you can’t have a wireless local network. Which means you will have to connect your XBOX and laptop to the wireless router via Ethernet cables. I’ve never done that – I’m just reading the manual. If I’m understanding it correctly, you can have wired ISP access and a wireless local network or wireless ISP access and a wired local network. If that’s the case, then you will also have to invest in two Ethernet cables.
As for you other questions, I don’t know. I’ve never used Internet Sharing. I’ve always had a router.
Also, do you have the ability to physically plug into the network (wired access via an Ethernet cable)? Then you could use the other mode of wired ISP and wireless local network (meaning you’d have to only buy one Ethernet cable). Or you could get a non-wireless router and go all wired.
I’ve never heard of that brand. I like Netgear and for some reason D-Link (edit: and Belkin, of course). I’ve owned a lot of Linksys devices, but one failed on me so I’m trying other brands at the moment. I don’t know if ZyXEL makes good stuff (maybe they do).
I think what you are looking at will work and that you are on the right track. But we will have to wait for a certain forum member to give his advice. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.
Ah, good point. We are talking about NAT, right? Network Address Translation? The router Matt is looking at has that. I assume it will do what he needs – allow incoming connections on a particular port to be forwarded to a particular port on a particular device on the internal network. I don’t have an XBOX so I’m not aware of any XBOX-specific peculiarities, if any.