Xbox 360 and Wifi adaptors

[galson]

I've got tired of constantly switching the ethernet cable between my laptop and my 360 lately and I wanna set up a network between these two. Since the laptop has only one ethernet port I decided to do it wirelessly. Unfortunately the official MS wifi adaptor costs way too much (50-60 quid) and I've been wondering if I could simply use a normal wifi receiver from PC, which I can get for £10. Does that work with X360? Thanks in advance.

 

[Randell]

I don't beleive a normal USB adpater will work. A wifi 'bridge' will, as my old ethernet bridge i used on the original Xbox did work until I got the official one

 

[galson]

Ahh, that sucks, mate. In that case I have to jump out of £50 for it :/

 

[Zaphod]

There's a Belkin for £40, and you might find similar functionality for less. Still cheaper than the MS adapter.

 

[galson]

I realize you mention wanting to do one wirelessly, but if you already have no problems using ethernet with both, why would you not just get a cheap switch or router?

Hmm, yes it seems to be a better idea, dunno why I hadn't thought of that. Would this one do? And do I need two cross over cables for it?

 

[kyleb]

That should do, and there is no reason you should need any crossover cables with it.

 

[assen]

Cross-cables are a thing of the past, virtually all modern LAN cards detect when you connect them back-to-back (instead of to a switch/hub/router) and behave accordingly.

 

[galson]

OK, I've purchased that switch, should arrive next week. I assume it will work with a cross cable as well? Because I have two ethernet cables and one cross which I used to use for LAN with my friend.

Thanks for help

 

[kyleb]

I know the crossover cable will work between the 360 and whatever you connect it to since the 360 auto detects the connection type.

 

[RadioFr33Europe]

I bought a Buffalo Wireless G-125, flashed it to dd-wrt and wirelessly bridged it to my wireless network. I put the G-125 in my living room and plugged the 360 and DirecTV receiver to it via wire.

 

[galson]

OK guys, the switch arrived today morning and I can't seem to make it work. It is a Pluscom 5 Port 10/100 Switch (namely this one). I connect the modem to the switch and then plug two cables, one to my laptop and the other one to X360. The laptop works fine, I can access the internet and all, but my 360, even though it detects a wired network adapter it won't connect to Xbox Live at all. During testing it fails the IP Address test. What can be the problem? It happens with both cross and normal ethernet cable.

 

[mrcorbo]

I think people may have been assuming you already had a wireless router because you were talking about using a wireless adapter to connect your 360. A switch isn't going to allow you to connect 2 devices with different MAC addresses to a modem directly as it is only designed to communicate with one. You can IIRC force the 360 to copy the MAC address of the laptop's NIC, which may work (and I was able to get an XBOX1 to work this way back in the day) but is a really ugly way to do this and the 2 devices may interfere with each other. What you really need is a router.

 

[AzBat]

Without a router with DHCP it won't ever assign an IP address to the 360. My DSL modem has a router included, so I can just use a switch(Netgear). Anyway, you might have to enable Internet Sharing on the PC for that. Use the link below for a primer for some help...

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/connecttolive/xbox360/default.htm

Good luck!

Tommy McClain

 

[galson]

I see, I'll be needing a router then. Unfortunately I can't share this connection via PC as my laptop has only one ethernet port. In order to do it wirelessly I'd need an adaptor for 360 which I don't want to buy atm as it's too expensive. A wireless router is basically the same price. Which leaves me with switching the cable for now I guess.

Thanks for help anyways

 

[AzBat]

The nice thing about a wireless router though is that you can still connect to it via cables. That's what I would do. Just get a cheap wireless router and connect the 360 and/or the laptop to it via cables. Hopefully you can return or sell the switch you already bought.

Tommy McClain

 

[SugarCoat]

just a little known secret, you can actually buy the MN740 wireless adapter that was initially released for the origonal xbox, it works just fine for the 360 and MSRP wise costs half the price as the official one.