Using a third party Ethernet wireless adapter

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Parent Category: Frequently Asked Xbox Live Questions

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Using a third party wireless ethernet adapter can take more configuration before you will successfully connect your Xbox to Xbox live.

The main problem is that most adapters cannot be configured via the 360 Dashboard, so you will need to configure the adapter directly via your PC.

When you buy a wireless router it will come preconfigured with an ip address. When you buy a wireless ethernet adapter it will also come preconfigured with an ip address, if they are both from different vendors (i.e. one Dlink , one Belkin) the chances are that the two ip addresses will be on different ranges, meaning they wont talk to each other and you'll get an IP Address Failed message on the Xbox.

I won't cover how to resolve this for each different wireless adapter, its impossible, I'll give you guidelines and you should be able to work it out yourself.

The first thing you need to find out is what ip address range your router is on, so on your PC:-

• Start/Run
• Type in cmd and press return
• When the window appears type ipconfig
• Look for the default gateway and note it down, that is the address of your router

For this example we'll say that the default gateway was 192.168.1.1

Next you need to plug the wireless adapter directly into your PC (not via the router). At this stage you need to consult the adapters manual/documentation, if you don't have any you need to download a manual from the manufacturers website.

There are usually two ways to reconfigure the wireless adapter:-

1. Use a setup program that came on a CD with the adapter
2. Reconfigure your PC ip address (temporarily) to match the ip address range of the wireless adapter, so you can use your web browser to browse to the setup page of the adapter

Whichever way you choose to reconfigure the adapter is up to you, both ways will be explained in the adapters documentation please don't ask me how to do it as the vendor explains how to do this for you.

Once you have got to the setup screen, you need to change the ip address details on the adapter itself, so using the example in this FAQ, you need to change the ip address of the wireless adapter to:-

IP Address: 192.168.1.200

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

If your router range is different, 192.168.0 or 192.168.2 you need to make the relevant substitution.

Once the changes have made to the adapter and saved. Restart the adapter and connect the Xbox and try again.

If the Xbox still fails on "IP Address Failed" DHCP might not be working so you can manually enter these details into the Xbox instead:-

IP Address: 192.168.1.100

Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

Remember the details above are based on this example subnet 192.168.1 you might have to change the bits in bold to reflect your own setup.