Help networking XBox

[amusedtoe]

I recently purchased myself an XBox, but now I find myself in a pickle trying to get it networked up without having to take it and set it by the router everytime I want to get on Live. The situation is that there's two phone jacks in the entire house, neither of which by where I desire the XBox to live, the router, Netgear WGR614v4, is hooked up to one and the computers all connect to it wirelessly. I'm done trying to figure out a way to get it to work without buying any more networking equipment, even though I still don't like paying $70 to $100, so I'd like your opinion as to what to use. Right now I'm really leaning towards the Netgear WGE111, which can be seen here. It's not as horribly priced as some of the other ones, and being Netgear I'm assuming far less likely to have problems with the router. Any thoughts on this, or any other hardware that will work?

 

[Kelemvor]

If you want the XBox networked you either have to run a cable to where it is or get a wireless add-in card for it. Lots of people use the LinkSys WRT54G router as a bridge that can talk back to your primary network. I'm not sure how it works talking back to a non-LinkSys wireless router but you could always try it. Otherwise there are specific product made for wirelessly connecting an XBox to a network.

Also, what Phone Jacks are you referring to? Do you use Dial Up?

 

[amusedtoe]

Sorry, the phone jack's for the DSL modem to connect to. As far as using another router I was going to as they're far cheaper then the ethernet wireless adapters, like the WGE111 or the XBox brand one, but I've been told that it would create a double nat so my performance wouldn't be good and I wouldn't be able to host any games.

 

[user1234]

An exact solution to your situation is explained here . Bottom line, buy a Linksys WRT54G wireless router which will serve as a wireless bridge between your XBOX and your main wireless router. Note that only this router can accomplish this functionality because it's firmware is open source, so people created modified versions of it, which have all these extra functions. Otherwise, you would have to actually buy an expensive wireless bridge (like Linksys WET54G).

 

[user1234]

Originally posted by: FrankyJunior
If you want the XBox networked you either have to run a cable to where it is or get a wireless add-in card for it. Lots of people use the LinkSys WRT54G router as a bridge that can talk back to your primary network. I'm not sure how it works talking back to a non-LinkSys wireless router but you could always try it. Otherwise there are specific product made for wirelessly connecting an XBox to a network.

Also, what Phone Jacks are you referring to? Do you use Dial Up?

Yeah, WRT54G works just fine as a client to any other wireless router. And you don't need to change any settings on your main router at all, as the client wrt54g appears to it as a single client computer, even if you have more than one device attached to the client wrt54g (thanks to NAT).

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure that those last two comments are quite accurate, I have a WRT54Gv2, and it does not support cient AP mode nor wireless bridging, at least not without paying extra for a warranty-violating buggy 3rd-party firmware. (And from what I understand, when used in client AP mode with Sveasoft firmware, it only supports a single device plugged into a wired port. Unless things have changed recently.)

I'd suggest looking elsewhere than LinkSys if you want that kind of functionality.

 

[user1234]

incorrect, I have two of them attached right now, one I'm using to write this, and just started a large download via bittorrent on the other one (it's doing 100 KB/sec).

Actually it's doing 140 KB/s on the bittorrent download right now (=1.2 Mbps net transfer rate).


And the 3rd party firmware is free, as it's just a slight modification of the original open source firmware, which is in itself just a cut down version of linux (which is why they linksys had to release it as open source). One nice thing about the the wrt54g, is that you can telnet into the router and manually change setting using linux commands. So you can actually achieve any routing behavior that you like. But the client mode I described doesn't require any manual changes, besides using the regular web interface of sveasoft firmware .

 

[amusedtoe]

I can't find where you can download it on the site unless you've paid $20.

Edit- I was looking for some reviews on the WRT54G and on Tom's Hardware, here, it says that Linksys has updated the firmware to support bridging. Do you know anything about that since I couldn't find anything on the Linksys site.

 

[user1234]

Can you follow instructions ? go to google - type "wrt54g alchemy firmware" (without the quotes) and it's in one of the top 10 links (hint: the one in the .de domain).

Actually< regarding the linksys firmware, I recall reading somewhere that someone did do bridging with the original firmware, but I don't remeber why I didn't try that. Maybe because I thought it wasn't exactly what I need. Come to think of it, why would Linksys allow such a feature, when they sell a wireless ethernet bridge product (WET54G) for more money ?

I'm not sure where I saw that, but you can try following the links in this thread if you want to investigate it further. In any case, it would be the same as using the 3rd party firmware, because they all share the same code base, and only introduce slight modifications to allow the various different routing schemes. In the end, this router is a mini linux system which is very easy to adapt to anyone's needs.

 

[amusedtoe]

I overlooked that one when I searched for it before. Thanks for the help, I cancelled my order I'd placed a little while ago for the WGE111 and are going to order the WRT54G since Newegg has it on sale for $50 with free shipping.

 

[mboy]

But does it supprot WPA in bridging mode?