Pushing the home Media Experience to the Extreme?
Well I have been trying to do the whole media experience thing at home. I have an internal network (soon to have a full Active Directory Forest with Exchange and ISA 2006 Beta); on this internal network I have three Windows XP Professional machines.
Computer1 – My old notebook Windows XP Pro SP2
Computer2 – My Microsoft Notebook Windows XP Pro x64-Bit
Computer3 – My Windows XP Pro SP2 Media Centre PC
I then have a Wireless 802.11a/b/g router which has the COOOOOOLEST feature, it has a USB 2.0 port at the back, you can take any USB 2.0 or 1.x storage device and plug it into the back of this wireless router, it will then make this device accessable on the wireless network (kinda like a wireless network storage device ) but it’s a Wireless AP, has a Broadband modem built in and has 4 100/10mbps ports.
Then I have my Xbox 360 which I am trying to connect to the network but with loads of issues.
The Xbox sees the wireless network, it acquires an IP address and has a full link (its about 5 meters away from the Wireless Access Point). However it seems to drop the connection after it acquires an IP address, I can’t ping it from any other computer on the same network. The computers can all ping each other and they can all use the internet too. If I do a “Test Media Connection” for about 4 pings I get a reply from the XBOX (while its doing the tests) then it starts timing out again. I do the “Test Media Connection” and it does behaves the same way, 4 replies then it stops replying.
At first I thought this was an issue with the wireless network adapter so I took a Ethernet cable and plugged it into my wireless router and into the back of the XBOX 360, I can see it acquiring a IP address then it produces the same results as above, it does not respond to a ping, if I go and do a “Test Media Connection” it replies 4 times then stops replying as soon as the test is over. I have done this test from 3 different computers in my home network (these three computers can ping each other are sharing files and folders and have the correct firewall settings, they can also all browse the internet). The wireless access point is allowing 50 IP addresses to be leases and does not have MAC filtering enabled (it does have WPA but the Xbox 360 has the key and is able to acquire an IP address).
I have rebooted the XBOX 360 several times with the same results, it seems no matter what I do the 360 just does not want to allow others to talk to it on the network, I find it really weird that it will respond to pings ONLY when I do the “Test Media Connection” and as soon as its finished testing the connection it stops responding. This is the same for WIRED and WIRELESS connections which baffles me to.
A sample output from the pings follows:
C:\>ping –t 192.168.16.103
Pinging 192.168.16.103 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 192.168.16.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 --- > The Xbox 360 is now replying
Reply from 192.168.16.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 --- > The Xbox 360 is now replying
Reply from 192.168.16.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 --- > The Xbox 360 is now replying
Reply from 192.168.16.103: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64 --- > The Xbox 360 is now replying
Request timed out. --- > The Xbox 360 is now NOT replying
Request timed out. --- > The Xbox 360 is now NOT replying
Request timed out. --- > The Xbox 360 is now NOT replying
Request timed out. --- > The Xbox 360 is now NOT replying
Request timed out. --- > The Xbox 360 is now NOT replying
Notice how AFTER the “Test Media Connection” has completed it then starts timing out.
This is something I don’t understand, so if anyone reading this understands this or has had the same issue please post a comment I would really appreciate it.
Below is a "network diagram" of my home network to help put a picture to your mind:
Thanks
Carlos