Be Excellent To Each Other

Ok, so Ange has got a laptop now, so I have three machines on my wireless network (two laptops and my 360, all wireless). For some reason now, my Xbox won't sign into Live, despite all the tests being fine.

I'm crap at networking, so any advice as to what's going on would be great. I checked my ipconfig settings and my laptop is set to 192.168.0.3, but weirdly when I did the same on Ange's PC it gave me an error saying a device is not configured correctly. How do I check what IP address my 360 is on?

This is all rather frustrating.

I also suck at networking, but...

Does your router have DHCP on?
Is everything (like Ange's laptop) set to listen to what address your router wants to give it, or has anything been assigned a static address (within the range of your routers DHCP settings)?

Network Settings > Edit Settings should give you your 360 info.

Easy way - ping everything from .1 to .10 and see what you get a response on.

There's a test network settings in the system blade or something like that, a quick look in that area will find it.

Just checked. Go to the system blade, selecte network settings and then edit settings, and it'll give you all the IP addresses and stuff that it's using.

Has everyone got me on ignore or something?

Yes, very much so.

This is weird. Despite it not wanting to log in, it tells me I have 22 friends online and shows me when someone comes online - I just can't do anything!

How do I set up the computers to listen? I haven't set up any static IP addresses (would this be easier?)

My Xbox's IP address is 192.168.0.2. I've tried manually setting it to 192.168.0.5 and I get the same problem; all the tests pass with flying colours, but I still can't log into Live properly.

This is annoying.

I hate networking, so you're on your own.

If you set your 360 to automatic, does it work then?

It was on automatic before, so fuck knows.

SUCCESS, or so I thought. I turned off my laptop and rebooted my 360 and lo and behold, it signs in fine. I turn my laptop back on and it connects up to the internet just dandy.

I go downstairs to check to see if Ange's is working, and it's stopped. FAIL.

I'll use my networking skills to determine that it's something to do with Ange's laptop.

Can you see what IP it's got and how?

(Network Connections - Wireless Network Connection (probably) - Support tab.)

She's turned it off now, so I'll check tomorrow. Do you think an ipconfig /release and /renew might sort it out?

FYP

I've no idea, I told you, I'm rubbish at networking.

Check that your router has an active DHCP server (which I presume it must have for your 360 to be on automatic) and see how many addresses it's giving out.
Increase this number if it's too low for the amount of machines on your network (but make sure the addresses it's going to assign don't clash with any static IPs you have, if you have any).

Then check Ange's laptop, if it's set to automatically obtain an IP, then it should be and everything should be fine, I think.
If it's got a static IP (do new laptops come with a static IP, that sounds unlikely), then it's probably clashing with a DHCP assigned address and there be your problems.

Otherwise, I dunno, I'm rubbish (at networking), remember.

You'd probably be best to set up a static IPs for everything, then you know for sure.

It's dead easy. Honest.

Go to your connection, (whatever its called) in Control Panel>Network Connections, Then Properties, and then select 'Internet Connections (TCP/IP)' and Properties again. Take off 'Obtain IP address automatically', and fill in the fields.
Your router's IP address is the one that you sign into it with. Usually 192.168.0.1. That's your 'Default Gateway'.
Your computer's IP address will be something in the range of 192.168.0.(2-255) Its probably best to pick a higher number than 2, just in case you ever want to put another router/switch in somewhere. Subnet Mask is 255.255.255.0, your DNS servers are what your ISP tells ya, or 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (Which are OpenDNS's servers, and are very reliable) and thats about it. Do the same for the other things on the network, changing the IP address for each one. Bob's you mother's creepy uncle.

Cheers for that Pundie. I'll definitely give it a go if I get further problems, but I think I've solved it.

I was having a look through the services on Ange's laptop this morning and found that 'Routing and Remote Services' was disabled. I re-enabled it and then it obtained an IP address. I haven't tested the other machines this morning as I didn't have time, but fingers crossed.

Crap, it's still not working.

I'm trying to follow your instructions, Punds, but I'm on Vista and struggling to find the relevant options.

Bloody Vista.

Hokey-Cokey-Pig-In-A-Pokey.

Start Menu>Network>Properties>Manage Network Connections> Right Click on connection and select Properties> Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4)> Properties> Bang in your IP address, Subnet Mask and all the other gubbinz.

Please note, I do not have Vista, and thats what t'internets say.

Yes, I've found it (I couldn't see it for seeing it). I've now given every device in the house its own IP address:

My Vista laptop - 192.168.0.3
Ange's XP laptop - 192.168.0.4
Xbox 360 - 192.168.0.5
My iPhone - 192.168.0.6
Ange's iPhone - 192.168.0.7

This is great and they all connect to the internet now, BUT the Xbox's network performance is SLOW AS SHIT. Sending a message can take up to 30 seconds and I've just tried to load up Gears of War to play with itsallwater, and it needs an update. This is awesome, BUT it keeps freezing halfway up the progress bar. I HAVE NEVER HAD THIS PROBLEM BEFORE.

I've got all the default gateways set to 192.168.0.1 and the primary and secondary DNS servers set to the Open DNS ones you kindly provided. Why is it doing this? I'm about to kill myself.

What's your NAT like? Oh, and what's the performance of your compy like?

NAT is open according to the Xbox connection tests. Performance of my computer is normal.

Is there any way I can set my router to treat any traffic to and from my 360 as the highest priority?

Depends on your router. Look for QoS settings.

Nothing called QoS in the settings. Now I've set up the Xbox with a static IP address, do I have to make sure certain ports are open?

Okay, weird. Try rebooting everything on the network, first. Check you've assigned all the IP addresses how you think you have. (Sounds dumb, but I managed to set my 360 and my computer to the same IP adress. It didn't like that at all. :O)

As to ports, You could try DMZing the 360 and see if that makes a difference. If your router allows that. If it does, then you can either forward the XBOXLIVE!!! ports, or keep it as a DMZ. Keeping it as a DMZ is in theory risky, but in practice doesn't matter, because the 360 tells anything it doesn't recognise as XboxLive data to fuck off.

If you want to forward the ports properly, then try this site...

http://portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/XboxLive360/XboxLive360index.htm

Weird, I just tried to download a test file on my computer and the download speed's rubbish as well. I've checked Ange isn't downloading the entire internet, before you ask.

What is DMZ and how do I set that up?

DMZ basically opens all the ports on the box that you've enabled DMZ on. You can only DMZ one box on your network. This is an incredibly stupid thing to do on a computer. For obvious reasons. The options to do it are usually pretty obvious, they're in the router menus somewhere.

IT'S THE FUCKING NEW LAPTOP. I went downstairs to check its ipconfig and it's got that stupid error message again. I can't even do a release/renew on it, the same error comes up. I've just turned it off AND AUTOMAGICALLY THE XBOX STARTS WORKING FINE.

I'll be outside hanging from a tree if you want me.

I'd be tempted to run a packet sniffer to see quite what the laptop is up to while it's on.

That sounds great, but is complete nonsense to me.

Check laptop drivers perhaps? or it's doing something odd. Also check if you'd set any port forwarding for ya XBOX and that the IP is being used by Ange's lappy... so traffic is trying to get to her lappy instead.

Just for reference I forward port 3074 and 88 to my XBOX... I think I remember Bungie's help told me to do so for my NAT.... might be worth a try but also might fuck things more.

I'm not touching the port forwarding because my NAT is open and I don't want to fuck with that. I bet it is the laptop drivers, but I thought I installed them all properly. It's an old IBM Thinkpad T42 if that helps anyone help me to fix it.

I have the same problem with my IBM lappy, not being able to use ipconfig when connected over wireless. It's an arse and I think driver related but never been able to fix it. Mind it also does'nt boot me off my own network but I have wired my xbox in due to me being cheap.

After ploughing through millions of SPYWARE! VIRUSES! etc posts, someone suggested that the Routing and Remote Access service might be stopped.

Er, open a command prompt, type services.msc, find "Routing and Remote Access" and set it automatic, I guess.

Edit - maybe this one too - Remote procedure call (RPC)

3rd time lucky, apparently the drivers you get off windows update don't work properly with a T42. So roll them back if you can, or get some from the IBM site.

When you started RRAS, did you set it to automatic?

Thanks anyway, I do appreciate it. I got all the drivers I'm using from the IMB (Lenovo) site... bah. I'll have a look at it tomorrow if I get time.

Oh, right. In that case, see Craster's question.

I don't even know what RRAS is.

I've found this, so I'm going to give it a whirl tomorrow. Not now, definitely not now.

Routing and Remote Access Service.

You and your silly (initialisms - Ed). No, it's set to manual. Is this a problem?

Well if it's manual it won't start up with the machine and you'll be back to square 1.

THIS.

You think YOU have problems following this...

You know how sometimes you just leave something if you can't do it, come back to it the next day and they work out just fine? All five devices are working normally now as if the magical network fairy visited me last night.

I hate networking.