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Author Topic: Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection  (Read 843 times)

Aldanga

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Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection
« on: June 21, 2013, 01:29:00 PM »

Is the 360 sharing the same IP address as the laptop or does it have its own? If the second, find out what the IP address and ensure it's on the same subnet. If it's not, you should be able to specifically allow your 360's IP address access to the computers' shared files and services.
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Aldanga

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Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2013, 04:09:00 PM »

What I was thinking would work before (whitelisting the IP address) does not seem to be possible with WMC. Being on the same subnet is absolutely required, at least without some clever hocus pocus.

It's been several years since I have done anything with connection sharing on XP, but I believe you should be able to modify the IP address given to the slave device (the 360) from the host OS (XP). You will need to set this IP address statically in the 360 as well (i.e., it should match what you set on the laptop) to access the network. DNS and router addresses on the 360 can be set to your laptop's IP address. (Do not try to set the IP address from the 360 alone as that will not work with connection sharing.)
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marshdabeachy

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Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection
« Reply #2 on: June 24, 2013, 12:01:00 AM »

Still not much progress. I'm not able to get the shared connection to live on the same subnet as the router. Well I can, but the laptop is then no longer able to connect to the internet. I'm hardly an expert on shared connections, but it seems to only play nice when it's on a different subnet.

(For reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126)

On the bright side, using that support link, I was able to set a static IP on my 360 (192.168.0.2) and have it connect to Live. (Laptop's ethernet port is set to 192.168.0.1.) It is, of course, on the wrong subnet still.

Doing more research, I came across a feature called static routing which is supposed to allow subnets to talk to each other. However, I can't seem to find any support for it in my router settings (I've got a Belkin F6D4230-4 v1.)

According to this Microsoft article, I can use a network bridge to get everything on the same subnet. I briefly tried that in the past and everything quit connecting, but maybe this is worth exploring again?

Seems silly this is so difficult.
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Aldanga

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Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection
« Reply #3 on: June 24, 2013, 01:34:00 AM »

It's complicated because ICS is a hacky thing. It served a purpose, but it's always been hacky.

BTW, both of your links are the same, so I can't review that support article.
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marshdabeachy

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Can't See 360 Over Shared Connection
« Reply #4 on: June 24, 2013, 11:23:00 PM »

Ok, finally got it operational. (That was easy!  rolleyes.gif ) Thanks for your help Aldanga.

To summarize for people coming from a Google search:

Issue: You want to share media from a desktop PC to an Xbox 360, but the 360 is too far away from your router and does not have wifi. However, you have a laptop with wifi and an ethernet cable to connect the two.

Solution: You must create a Network Bridge from your laptop on your ethernet and wireless connections. In my case, once I did this, my laptop completely lost connection (no IP address). You can fix it using this support article. Once this was working, I had to change my 360 from Automatic to Manual network settings, and assign it an IP address outside of my router's DHCP range. (For example, if the range is 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.150, you could use 192.168.1.200). Be sure to also assign the Primary DNS Server. (Your router's IP.) Once all this was in place, the 360 showed up as a device in my network and I was able to add it as an Extender.

Special note: Internet Connection Sharing will not work because it puts the 360 on a different subnet than your router. Unless you do some magic in your router settings that enables cross-subnet communication (which my router did not support), I don't think it's possible to get this method working.
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