Mr_Belowski
Established Member
Hey kids 
Dunno if this will be useful to any of you, but I thought I'd share my experiences of running Xbox Live from a wireless router connected through a wireless game adaptor. Some of this is techy stuff, so might not be that interesting unless you're thinking of connecting your Xbox to Live wirelessly.
I've got a Linksys WRT54G router, and a Linksys WGA54G wireless game adaptor (which is basically the same as a single-client wireless ethernet bridge). I've had the router for a while (never bothered to upgrade the firmware), and chose the Linksys gaming adaptor cos it was cheaper than their equivalent wireless bridge (the WET54G, which has a pretty dreadful reputation by the way), and I figured that sticking with the same manufacturer might help things go smoothly.
OK, so how good is it?
Well, it seems to work very nicely. Now it's configured (more on the configuration below) it works great. The only critisim I have is the range. My laptop's built in wireless card seems to get a stronger signal than the WGA54G when it's in the same place. It works, but if your Xbox is at the limit of you wireless network's range then you might see some issues. My WGA54G is in the room above my Xbox with a CAT5 cable running through a hole in the floor. My router is in the atic, my WGA54G is in the living room, and my xbox is in the cellar, all at the front of the house. Set up like this it's been very reliable.
Configuration...
Configuring the little device is simple. First, you MUST plug it directly into your PCs network card. If you plug it into a LAN port on a wireless router it goes nuts cos it's making a circular bridge from the wireless network to the LAN, back to the wireless network and on to the LAN etc etc.
On my configuration, I've disabled the device's MAC address cloning, and set it to have a static IP address in the same range as the rest of the stuff on my LAN. My router sees it as a separate device on my network. My Xbox has its own IP address (in the same range as the LAN and WGA54G), and the Xbox's DNS is set to my ISP's DNS. This is pretty much the default configuration (except for the MAC address cloning bit - my router doesn't need the WGA54G to be transparent, so there's no point in making it transparent).
I've also got 128bit WEP encryption enabled, so I put the key into the device and it happily joined my network. Note that the WGA54G does NOT support the newer WPA wireless encryption technology.
So far so good. Now on to my tweaking experiences.
I initially had it set up with no port-forwarding or other firewall changes. It seemed to work OK, but I had trouble joining games. On PGR2 (which is, IMO, the most reliable Live game) I would often get a "Session no longer available" message when I tried to join a game. I reckon I was able to join only 1 in 4 games successfully - very annoying.
After playing with the firewall setup on the router, I settled on this configuration: The WGA54G is in a demilitarized zone. This means that the firewall is effectly disabled for the WGA54G. Obviously, this is a silly thing to do for a PC, but as the WGA54G is a simple bridge with just an Xbox on the other end, I figured there wasn't much to hack on it. Then I opened the Xbox Live ports on the firewall (can't remember the numbers - there are 3 of them), and mapped them to the Xbox's IP address. So the game adaptor completely bypasses the firewall, and specific Live traffic is sent direct to the Xbox (via the game adaptor, of course).
I'll probably experiement with putting the WGA54G back behind the firewall when I've got time. But for now, configured like this it works great. The "Session no longer available" errors are almost completely gone, and I can host
If the WGA54G is in the demilitarised zone, but no ports are forwarded to the Xbox's IP address, I still have problems joining and hosting. I also tried it with the Xbox's IP address in the demilitarised zone, but again I seemed to struggle joining and hosting.
I've probably got a more open system than is absolutely necessary right now - I'll try putting the WGA54G back behind the firewall and forwarding the Live ports direct to the Xbox when I get the chance.
Anyway, sorry if that got a bit baffling - this networking malarky is a dark art at the best of times
I hope someone finds this useful - the WGA54G is a good little device, and when it's configured correctly it seems very reliable. If anyone needs more specific help setting one up I'd be happy to muck-in.
Dunno if this will be useful to any of you, but I thought I'd share my experiences of running Xbox Live from a wireless router connected through a wireless game adaptor. Some of this is techy stuff, so might not be that interesting unless you're thinking of connecting your Xbox to Live wirelessly.
I've got a Linksys WRT54G router, and a Linksys WGA54G wireless game adaptor (which is basically the same as a single-client wireless ethernet bridge). I've had the router for a while (never bothered to upgrade the firmware), and chose the Linksys gaming adaptor cos it was cheaper than their equivalent wireless bridge (the WET54G, which has a pretty dreadful reputation by the way), and I figured that sticking with the same manufacturer might help things go smoothly.
OK, so how good is it?
Well, it seems to work very nicely. Now it's configured (more on the configuration below) it works great. The only critisim I have is the range. My laptop's built in wireless card seems to get a stronger signal than the WGA54G when it's in the same place. It works, but if your Xbox is at the limit of you wireless network's range then you might see some issues. My WGA54G is in the room above my Xbox with a CAT5 cable running through a hole in the floor. My router is in the atic, my WGA54G is in the living room, and my xbox is in the cellar, all at the front of the house. Set up like this it's been very reliable.
Configuration...
Configuring the little device is simple. First, you MUST plug it directly into your PCs network card. If you plug it into a LAN port on a wireless router it goes nuts cos it's making a circular bridge from the wireless network to the LAN, back to the wireless network and on to the LAN etc etc.
On my configuration, I've disabled the device's MAC address cloning, and set it to have a static IP address in the same range as the rest of the stuff on my LAN. My router sees it as a separate device on my network. My Xbox has its own IP address (in the same range as the LAN and WGA54G), and the Xbox's DNS is set to my ISP's DNS. This is pretty much the default configuration (except for the MAC address cloning bit - my router doesn't need the WGA54G to be transparent, so there's no point in making it transparent).
I've also got 128bit WEP encryption enabled, so I put the key into the device and it happily joined my network. Note that the WGA54G does NOT support the newer WPA wireless encryption technology.
So far so good. Now on to my tweaking experiences.
I initially had it set up with no port-forwarding or other firewall changes. It seemed to work OK, but I had trouble joining games. On PGR2 (which is, IMO, the most reliable Live game) I would often get a "Session no longer available" message when I tried to join a game. I reckon I was able to join only 1 in 4 games successfully - very annoying.
After playing with the firewall setup on the router, I settled on this configuration: The WGA54G is in a demilitarized zone. This means that the firewall is effectly disabled for the WGA54G. Obviously, this is a silly thing to do for a PC, but as the WGA54G is a simple bridge with just an Xbox on the other end, I figured there wasn't much to hack on it. Then I opened the Xbox Live ports on the firewall (can't remember the numbers - there are 3 of them), and mapped them to the Xbox's IP address. So the game adaptor completely bypasses the firewall, and specific Live traffic is sent direct to the Xbox (via the game adaptor, of course).
I'll probably experiement with putting the WGA54G back behind the firewall when I've got time. But for now, configured like this it works great. The "Session no longer available" errors are almost completely gone, and I can host
If the WGA54G is in the demilitarised zone, but no ports are forwarded to the Xbox's IP address, I still have problems joining and hosting. I also tried it with the Xbox's IP address in the demilitarised zone, but again I seemed to struggle joining and hosting.
I've probably got a more open system than is absolutely necessary right now - I'll try putting the WGA54G back behind the firewall and forwarding the Live ports direct to the Xbox when I get the chance.
Anyway, sorry if that got a bit baffling - this networking malarky is a dark art at the best of times
I hope someone finds this useful - the WGA54G is a good little device, and when it's configured correctly it seems very reliable. If anyone needs more specific help setting one up I'd be happy to muck-in.
