XBox 360 Networking/Internet Access Made Easy
Ξ May 3rd, 2009 | → 1 Comments | ∇ Geeky, Microsoft, Mumble, Rant |
I hate gaming/gamers! Probably because A) I can’t see the point [read a book, go for a walk, ...], and B) because two people I [thought I] knew very well are very sadly addicts – one for The Sims [or practically anything else that might distract them from normality/life], and the other for the World of Warcraft [where she's a kiss-ass Elf, or some such shite!]. Oh, and C), my twelve-year-old son also plays too much! Sad individuals indeed. I truly can’t see the point.
Anyway, rant over, my son received a one month’s free trial on XBox [Saddoes] Live – or some such thing – and asked me if I could get his XBox 360 to connect to the Internet. As he’s in a room where there’s no wired network point, this meant doing it via a wireless connection.
So, on checking out the various sockets on the back of the 360 box, I tried connecting the thing using a LinkSys USB wireless adapter I had laying around. It didn’t work, and upon further reading, I’m led to believe that one requires a special Microsoft adapter.
That’s the bad news.
Now for the good news … if you’ve a wireless laptop, that also has a wired network-interface, there’s a workaround:
1. Connect your laptop to the Internet, via its built-in wireless;
2. Connect your XBox to your laptop, via a standard network cable [one is supplied with an XBox 360];
3. Bridge the laptop’s wired and wireless connections.
So, here’s the steps I went through on my ThinkPad [with XP installed]:
1. Boot/connect the machine to the network, via its wireless;
2. Connect the XBox to the ThinkPad’s wired network interface using a standard network cable;
3. Open your laptop’s Network Connections [Start | Control Panel | Network Connections];
4. Select both the wireless and wired connections;
5. Right-click on the selected connections, and select Bridge
Here’s the result:
And that was it: son-networked, playing even more games … hmmmmm – did I do the right thing?
on May 3rd, 2009 at 7:41 am
“did I do the right thing?”
IMHO – no, I don’t think you did, but we’ll drag him out for a swim today and a walk to see the bluebells tomorrow and we might counteract some of it!