I am unable to connect my Xbox (well, my 13-year-old son’s Xbox) to Xbox Live with a wireless configuration, although am successful using an Ethernet cable. I am thinking there is a firewall issue somewhere along the line but am unable to resolve it. (The wife won’t tolerate having a 50-foot Ethernet cable strung through the house. She just doesn’t understand ;))
We have FiOS. When the Xbox is connected by Ethernet cable directly to the FiOS router, everything works fine.
I have a wireless range extender (NetGear WN2000RPT) in the same room with the Xbox. When I connect the range extender by Ethernet cable to the Xbox, the Xbox network test succeeds in connecting to the network and to the Internet, but fails to connect to Xbox Live.
I have been tinkering with firewall settings using the admin panel for the FiOS router. I can’t find anything that resolves this. I know only a minimum about firewall management. Xbox Live uses ports TCP 3074, UDP 3074, UDP 2074, and UDP 88. (Nothing in the admin screens or user manual for the range extender indicates that it has its own firewall.) I do not know if it is sufficient to adjust the settings for the Xbox, or if I also have to adjust settings for the range extender. The range extender does not show up on the device list for the router admin panel, so I am thinking it is transparent to the router.
The only possibility I can think of is that the signal is not strong enough for the extender and the connection to Xbox Live times out, but the device shows a nice green indicator for signal strength.
How old is the xbox? Total shot in the dark here, but some early models of the xbox 360 did not come equipped with a wireless signal receiver. The adapter had to be bought separately.
Maybe I wasn’t clear. The Xbox does not have a wireless receiver. I am using a wifi bridge (the NetGear range extender, which is basically a wifi receiver plus access point) and connecting it to the Xbox using an Ethernet cable.
When the Xbox does its network test, does it show up as a connected device on the FIOS router admin screen? I’m not familiar with wireless extenders, but I’d expect the Xbox to get its own DHCP address.
One plan of attack - turn off firewall, MAC filtering, and any and all wireless encryption on the router, then try again. This is a terrible way to run permanently, but unless you’ve got a psycho neighbor waiting to pounce, should be OK for a few minutes. If that still doesn’t connect, then your issue is somewhere on the wireless extender. If that does connect successfully, try turning things back on on the router one at a time until you determine what’s breaking the Live connection.
I had a similar problem with my daughter’s Xbox. Eventually, I just broke down and spent the $30 for the proprietary Xbox wireless adapter. I plugged it in and things worked perfectly.
Go into your router’s settings. Dedicate a static IP address for the Xbox. Then, put that IP address in the router’s DMZ. That’ll allow all traffic to that address to skip around the firewall completely. It’s not a security risk, there’s nothing about your Xbox that would be vulnerable to outside hacking.
If you still have problems after that, we’ll need to start looking elsewhere.
I’ll take a look at this; won’t I have to also configure the Xbox to use that IP address? I’ll have to dig into the settings screens to see where to do that.
Nah. If your Xbox is configured to use DHCP, as most are by default, it’ll ask the router for an IP address when it’s turned on. All you need to do is configure the router so that when the Xbox comes on, it gives it the same address every time.
I connected to it wirelessly with my laptop and have no Internet connectivity. I keep tweaking the configuration of the extender and can’t figure out what’s wrong. It says that it is connected to the router, but there is no Internet.
The other strange thing is that the Xbox connectivity test said it was connected to the Internet when it probably wasn’t really. It only failed trying to connect to the Xbox Live server.
I know nothing about these devices, really, but if it has NEVER worked, it might be time for a call to tech support or something.
Do devices connected to it get IP addresses? Can they connect to other devices on your LOCAL network? What IP/Subnet is getting assigned to the wireless extender? Maybe your router is treating it funny?
I’m not really sure what the Xbox connectivity test “Internet” step MEANS. I think we can say for sure that it’s not pinging Google or something (Though it probably SHOULD ping some sort of MS server, it’s probably not doing so). I suspect very strongly that it’s doing something pretty dumb that isn’t REALLY verifying that internet connectivity exists, like, I dunno, verifying that a tracert somewhere goes more than 1 hop or something.
I wonder if it’s a DNS problem, like for some reason devices on the bridge are getting connectivity but no DNS somehow. It may be pinging the ip 64.4.11.37 (microsoft.com) for the internet connectivity step, but pinging live.com (as in, the name) for an Xbox live server.