XBox 360 - wirless

MisterNick

My son bought an XBox 360 Elite with his Christmas money.

Our Broad band supplier is Orange and we have a Livebox.

My son wants to link the Xbox to the internet, and the best way for us is to do it wirelesly as the lead is not long enough.

He has looked at a gizmo to do this but it is £50. Is there an alternative?

If not, is it OK to buy a longer lead to join the two together?

One last question; is there anything else we should know before proceeding?

Many thanks

JohnDep_2

Ok... Xbox wireless appears to be a rip off, and it is know for not being great.

A longer cable would be cheapest and easiest, I can get up to 15m easily and I think the going rate is £1 a metre extra.

Or use a UTP ("Corssover cable"- £2 on ebay) to connect a wireless laptop to the Xbox and share the internet over the laptop, this could get messy knowing windows. But you can buy a guide on ebay for abouta pound.

I dont think you can hack a cheaper adapter to work, unfortunatly.

Hope this helps.

Anthony2oo5

Well I can answer this because I have an Xbox and was looking into the same stuff. Im also a computer expert for the record.

Anyway, yes as you have already noticed the wireless adapter is £50 but I would avoid them anyway as the signal on any wireless device is hit or miss and not a good gaming experience as they tend to be slower than a Ethernet cable.

Your internet is with Orange so there is a few things you might want to consider. First, you may need to pay extra to Orange to play over the internet as it uses the line a bit more than simply browsing the internet, and (im guessing) you get your internet from them for free, so they might not like that. You can use it without telling them but I'm just giving you a heads up.


Do you have a router ? How is your internet setup, did they give you a wireless router with your connection ?

Answer nowadays is more than likely, so yes you can buy a longer Ethernet cable from ebay for around £5. Not only is this cheaper, but its a LOT more reliable and I would advise you to go with this method.

http://listings.ebay.co.uk/Cables-Connectors_Network-Cables-RJ45_W0QQ_trksidZm37QQdfspZ1QQfrisZ2QQfromZR40QQsacatZ57188QQsocmdZListingItemList

the cable you want is an Ethernet cable, whatever length you desire, with an RJ45 connector and try to get at least cat5. Cat5 or above is good. Lower will also work but cat5, cat5e and cat6 is recommended.

Hope I helped.

vyseyboy

If (and only if!) the router you have has spare ethernet ports at the back (usually there is four,) I'd recommend just buying a longer ethernet cable. Often overpriced, but currently you can get a 10 metre one delivered from Dell for ~£2.60, or longer for a bit more.

It's cheaper than you'll get them anywhere else, but probably won't last long.

See THIS thread.

MonkeySaving?

Anthony2oo5 wrote: »

Anyway, yes as you have already noticed the wireless adapter is £50 but I would avoid them anyway as the signal on any wireless device is hit or miss and not a good gaming experience as they tend to be slower than a Ethernet cable.

Er no, the speed of wireless has got nothing to do with gaming, gaming depends on ping times which is down to your ISP. And wireless is always slower than standard ethernet but that only has any relevance if you're transferring large files. The wireless adaptor for the Xbox 360 is great <IF> you have you have a Wireless A 2.4Ghz wireless router, you can stream HD vid over this no problem. If you have a standard wireless B/G router then go down the ethernet route (assuming you want to stream media from a media centre PC)

C_Ronaldo

I have the xbox wireless adapter and i manage to play on LIVE ok, was easy to setup as well, the cable would be cheaper but it would mean a cable trailing on the floor if the 360 and 360 are on different floors of your house

vyseyboy

MonkeySaving? wrote: »

Er no, the speed of wireless has got nothing to do with gaming, gaming depends on ping times which is down to your ISP. And wireless is always slower than standard ethernet but that only has any relevance if you're transferring large files. The wireless adaptor for the Xbox 360 is great <IF> you have you have a Wireless A 2.4Ghz wireless router, you can stream HD vid over this no problem. If you have a standard wireless B/G router then go down the ethernet route (assuming you want to stream media from a media centre PC)

There can be quite large spikes in ping as a result of wireless equipment if there is RF intereference, momentary disconnection, equipment changes connection speed etc. The ping isn't entirely down to the ISP all the time. But it isn't usually too bad unless theres something specific nearby causing interference.

I'm a bit confused by "wireless A 2.4GHz" - wireless A (IEEE 802.11a) is 5 Ghz.

802.11b/g is 2.4 GHz.

The max data rate of a and g is the same, 54 Mbps

So if the the "a" adapters are capable of streaming HD (I've no experience, but I'll believe you if you say they are,) a good "g" adapter should be capable too, with a standard "g" router.

Therefore another alternative would be to attach a 802.11g wireless bridge to the end of the shorter ethernet cable. These can be found for about £20-£35.

Just don't use a microwave nearby, or he'll get disconnected!

Little_John

Anthony I would love to know what field your an expert in.

Wireless signals depend on their environment, I have an Xbox 360 with the official wireless adaptor and it gets a better connection to my wireless router than the 2 pc's with wireless adaptor's and it is in the same room as 1 of the pc's so you can't say they are best avoided. yes wireless is slower than Ethernet but when you take in to account that the OP's internet connection is at most 24mbps probably upto 8mbps with orange then a 54mbps wireless connection is twice as fast as the 24mbps connection so wireless has absolutely no effect on this. cat5 is 100mbps.

The orange live box is a wireless router, again most people if they don't know what they are talking about use google to find the information out. it is actually made by sagem and its the FAST 3202. It has 2 eithernet ports on the side and will allow you to connect a USB device and make it a network device which is pretty good considering they are given away by orange/wanadoo.

cat5 or cat5e will be fine no need to spend the stupid money on buying a cat6 cable especially as the ethernet on both the 360 and livebox are only 10/100.

anyway onto the OP
If you want I will make you a cable to whatever length you want up to 300m as that is the length of a box of cable, its not a good idea to use such a long length but it will work and a box costs £25+VAT just to let you know and work won't be too happy if I make box of cable disappear.

as for the wireless adaptor yes it is expensive but it works, just plug it in set up the wireless connection and away it goes, no messing about. I got mine from scan.co.uk £52, they are £49.99 from PC world I think. you can also get them for free from Microsoft if you sign up for windows mobile training and qualify for the program with 4000 points, 4000 points is very achievable. The advantage of the wireless adaptor is it is powered by the console and fits to the back of the console very neatly.

The alternative is to buy a wireless gaming adaptor (wireless bridge), or a wireless access point or if you have another wireless router available you can configure that to work also. they all just extend a network via wireless, the thing with the gaming adaptors and bridges is that they usually only have 1 ethernet port on them. The big disadvantage of this method is that they require an extra power point to power the device.

stevemcol

Yep, you would normally expect your 'up to' 8 mbs ISP connection to be the bottleneck, not the 54mbs wireless connection. That's the theory.
Now in practice: I set one up several months ago and its performance is fine. Sample of one, agreed but it's all I've got to go on.
So the decision really should be is the adaptor worth the cost. Perhaps keep an eye on ebay for second hand ones.

MisterNick

Wow, Thanks for all the prompt replies.

I am afraid some of the techinical discussion went above my head.

The xbox and the live box are both in the same room. We could link them with an ethernet cable that was about 3m, but it would mean a wire across the floor, which I didn't want.
So it it is handy to know that we can use a 15m cable as we can run that around the room.

I think that we will run with the ethernet cable solution to start with, as I am not sure that my son will put this to full use. If he does use it and the cable is a nuisance, then perhaps we will look at the adapter.

Once again thanks to every body who took the trouble to reply

Anthony2oo5

Its ok throwing statistics in here and there but in real life scenarios, wireless is an awful method of gaming. If your not in the same room as the wireless router, then you will suffer. I have done this myself and speak from not only knowledge but experience. After using a wireless connection to my computer for online gaming, I got bored of the constant drop outs and therefore recently switched to the good reliable Ethernet.

This is not only the case in my house; I have setup Playstation 3 wireless connections for multiple friends and all complain about the lag, pop in the Ethernet, and it goes.

As you quite rightly said, wireless depends on their environment, but I didn;t want to confuse anyone and was giving good solid advice. If he where to buy an Ethernet cable then he can't go wrong.

I'd also like to know how you managed to get a 300 meter cable to work, seen as the maximum length you can run cat5 without a repeater is 100 meters. Interesting ....