Possibly complicated networking question, Up for a challenge?

[ProstheticHead]

So here's what I'm attempting to do:

I want to share movies through my XBOX360 via Rivet.
I don't want to buy the XBOX wifi adapter.

My supplies:
Spare wired router
50' Cat5e
6' Cat5e

XBOX is 40' (once cord is draped around couch along the floorboard) away from computer. Wireless router for normal network is way too far away around corners to reach.

So I have my secondary router hooked up next to my computer, wired to the Xbox and the computer. I want to share videos through the ethernet cable and wired router while accessing the internet through the wifi on my computer. However, it seems to me that I can't have my cake and eat it too.

I re-ordered the services through the control panel so that my Airport connection is my primary connection and the ethernet is the secondary connection. However, upon doing this the Xbox will not see Rivet any longer as I'm assuming OSX just ignores the wired connection since it is set as second fiddle.

I understand the easy fix to this whole situation is to just suck it up and accept that I can't use the internet while I stream a movie and just unhook/rehook the ethernet cable each time I wish to watch something. However, as stubborn as I am I refuse to accept this until I have kicked and screamed.

Any ideas on a method by which I can have my cake and eat it too?

This is your challenge, if you choose to accept it.

 

[balamw]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

Subnets and judicious use of the route command?



Are the ip addresses manually set or is there a dhcp server somewhere handing them out?



If the two nics are on separate subnets it becomes straightforward to route traffic specifically via one particular adapter.



B

 

[ProstheticHead]

The routers are each using DHCP.

So my wireless is handing me a 192.168.1.* and my wired is handing me a 192.168.2.*

Would I go into the router admin panels to make changes then?

 

[mikes63737]

I'm assuming this is what you want to set up:

Internet ---> Wireless Router ---> Mac (WiFi)
Mac (Ethernet) ---> XBOX (Ethernet)

You might be able to use Internet Sharing on your Mac to get this to work.

Open System Preferences and then the Sharing Panel.
Authenticate, if needed, and then turn on Internet Sharing with these settings:
Share your connection from [Airport]
To computers using [X] Ethernet

Say OK to whatever warning it gives you. Then, plug your XBOX directly into your Mac's ethernet port. Your Mac should assign your XBOX an IP, and it should work nicely. 🙂


Edit: Just to clarify - you would NOT use the additional wired router in this procedure. Just the 50' cable.

 

[ProstheticHead]

I'm assuming this is what you want to set up:

Internet ---> Wireless Router ---> Mac (WiFi)
Mac (Ethernet) ---> XBOX (Ethernet)

You might be able to use Internet Sharing on your Mac to get this to work.

Open System Preferences and then the Sharing Panel.
Authenticate, if needed, and then turn on Internet Sharing with these settings:
Share your connection from [Airport]
To computers using [X] Ethernet

Say OK to whatever warning it gives you. Then, plug your XBOX directly into your Mac's ethernet port. Your Mac should assign your XBOX an IP, and it should work nicely. 🙂


Edit: Just to clarify - you would NOT use the additional wired router in this procedure. Just the 50' cable.

Got it hooked up and internet sharing is on, however, my Xbox is returning the IP of 169.254.233.236 and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 with a gateway of 0.0.0.0 and won't see the shared files on the computer nor will it connect to Live.

 

[mikes63737]

Got it hooked up and internet sharing is on, however, my Xbox is returning the IP of 169.254.233.236 and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 with a gateway of 0.0.0.0 and won't see the shared files on the computer nor will it connect to Live.

Just did a quick Google search, and it turns out that there's something with the XBOX that will prevent it from getting an IP from the Mac. Try this to get your XBOX to use a static IP. (You already did the "on your Mac" section).

 

[ProstheticHead]

Just did a quick Google search, and it turns out that there's something with the XBOX that will prevent it from getting an IP from the Mac. Try this to get your XBOX to use a static IP. (You already did the "on your Mac" section).

Alright, well, I've got the XBOX all wired up to live and what not, but I'm still unable to share movies with it through Rivet. This seems to only work when the XBOX is hard wired into a router and my computer accessing the same router (be it wired or wireless).

 

[pitt1717]

your making it too complicated.. all you need to do is have 1 of the routers hand out dhcp, internet etc. disable all services on the other router.

plug the xbox into the router( now basically a switch) and then plug that router
into the other (dont use the wan port, just use the regular ports).

xbox--cable----router(services disabled)--cabe--wireless router----internet

this way all computers will be on the same subnet, and makes expanding easier

 

[ProstheticHead]

your making it too complicated.. all you need to do is have 1 of the routers hand out dhcp, internet etc. disable all services on the other router.

plug the xbox into the router( now basically a switch) and then plug that router
into the other (dont use the wan port, just use the regular ports).

xbox--cable----router(services disabled)--cabe--wireless router----internet

this way all computers will be on the same subnet, and makes expanding easier

Yeah, the trouble with that is the wireless router is much too far (and impractical) to stretch a cable to.

I've managed to reroute some things and got it doing what I wanted it to do in terms of sharing the videos. Can't get it on Xbox Live though since it is wired through a router that goes nowhere but into my computer. Oh well, didn't really care about live too much, sharing movies was the most important part!

Thanks for all the advice everyone!

 

[pitt1717]

well then if you use your airport connection for internet, you will need to direct eth0 to use it as a gateway.
so if the airport is 192.168.1.100, eth0's gateway needs to be set as that not your wireless router. this way when traffic comes from the xbox it will get to eth0 of the mac. eth0 will then route traffic to the airport interface and it will sent out to the wireless router

if the wired router to the xbox hands out dhcp for 192.168.2.x put the gateway of the airport address in there