Computer Xbox 360 Gaming Wireless Connection Question

[Guest Sundancefisher]

My son is playing Black Ops and we have a wireless router Cisco Linksys.

 

He says there is a poor connection and a lot of lag which negatively affects play. We tried moving the game closer to the computer without much benefit.

 

Anyone ever have this problem and if so what is the cheap fix?

 

Thanks

 

Sun

[Taco]

I'd blame Shaw, payin' for Extreme, sure as christ ain't gettin' it

[Jayhad]

I have the wireless link as well, I always disconnect it and hardwire it for first person shooters. Plus a major improvement is made on the COD franchise is you download the game to the machine and play off of the machine and not the disk. I play COD Black Ops and these fixes are noticable

[Guest Sundancefisher]

I have the wireless link as well, I always disconnect it and hardwire it for first person shooters. Plus a major improvement is made on the COD franchise is you download the game to the machine and play off of the machine and not the disk. I play COD Black Ops and these fixes are noticable

 

I suppose an option would be to have a hard wire out of our Shaw modem or router and then feed it down to the basement. Where do you buy those cables and how much do you think they are a foot?

[robert]

yep, hard wire the console to the router is the way to go for sure sundance. to buy the premade cat5 patch cables isn't cheap but to make them is. You can buy the premade patch cables at any computer store like memory express.

 

Another option is powerline - like this http://homestore.cisco.com/en-us/adapters/...9VVviewprod.htm.

 

It turns your home electrical wiring into a network, pretty cool stuff. I've installed it and it does work, most computer stores carry them.

[robert]

Rereading your post, do you have a shaw connection? for anyone running cable internet, here's a few things to check out.

 

most older homes have what's called RG58 cabling (or lower) - the newer and better standard is RG-6, and when shaw upgrades the cabling it's generally RG6 that's brought into play. That said, RG58 in your home will give you decent signal BUT...

 

I've found that many times people will use cheap cabling for their TV's or dvr's or whatever. Signal losses will occur with these cheapie cables. As well, cheap dollar store cable splitters will wreak havoc with shaw.

 

The best thing to do with shaw cable internet is to isolate it from your home TV's and the RG58 network of your home. An easy way to test if you're having issues with internet due to cabling is to connect the shaw internet modem directly to the incoming line into your home -- and disconnect the rest. Leave it like that for a while and try some downloading and speed tests.

 

I've been bitten by this in the past, and know many others that have as well.

 

One other big issue is that many shaw techs can't make a proper patch cable - this is the cable they supply that goes from your modem to your router. Most times I see this cable terminated wrong and it causes grief - if it looks home made then it probably is - buy one to replace it.

 

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

yep, hard wire the console to the router is the way to go for sure sundance. to buy the premade cat5 patch cables isn't cheap but to make them is. You can buy the premade patch cables at any computer store like memory express.

 

Another option is powerline - like this http://homestore.cisco.com/en-us/adapters/...9VVviewprod.htm.

 

It turns your home electrical wiring into a network, pretty cool stuff. I've installed it and it does work, most computer stores carry them.

 

Cool...probably outside my geek level though... Probably blow the house up. Another question...can I get a standard external hard drive to use with the XBOX360 or do you have to buy one from Microsoft?

[robert]

Cool...probably outside my geek level though... Probably blow the house up. Another question...can I get a standard external hard drive to use with the XBOX360 or do you have to buy one from Microsoft?

 

Too easy, you plug the main into the power next to your router, you plug a cable from router to AC adapter - you plug the other end into any AC source in your home and plug your network cable into it. hard to blow up a house that way.

 

Yep, apparently you can use external USB drives with your xbox.

 

http://llamma.com/xbox360/mods/USB%20Hard%20Drive%20Mod.htm

 

Pretty simple. Hard to believe that after so many years of microsoft pushing ntfs, that their xbox systems use fat32.

 

[midgetwaiter]

Too easy, you plug the main into the power next to your router, you plug a cable from router to AC adapter - you plug the other end into any AC source in your home and plug your network cable into it. hard to blow up a house that way.

 

Yep, apparently you can use external USB drives with your xbox.

 

http://llamma.com/xbox360/mods/USB%20Hard%20Drive%20Mod.htm

 

Pretty simple. Hard to believe that after so many years of microsoft pushing ntfs, that their xbox systems use fat32.

 

This is sort of correct. You can use any external drive for things like movies and music but if you want to be able to install games to it you need the Microsoft drive. It's a standard drive in that funky slap on the side of it case but is uses a screwy drive format to make it difficult to copy games.

 

The ethernet over power things are kind of interesting but a dedicated cable is really the way to go if you can. Setting up one of those things is really easy though, try the Western Digital Live Wire.

 

If wireless is your only option you can disable the encryption and rely on MAC Address list security. Encryption will add a certain amount of latency (lag) to every packet sent, the problems with that approach are pretty obvious though.

 

 

 

[robert]

Or if you really want to cheap out, you can grab an older wireless linksys router - one of the ones with the two antennas is best. Load the tomato firmware found here:

http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

 

What this allows you to do is put the older linksys into client mode and you can link to your network with this router just like you can any wireless laptop or network device. The thoroughput is much greater and it works. I have it done right now, laptop is plugged into the router running tomato - the dlink wireless is two rooms over and I noticed a huge difference in surfing and downloading as compared to my laptop linked directly to the dlink.