Follow Up From Christmas Eve Post: The Xbox 360 was opened, the kids were thrilled (and haven’t stopped playing Sonic The Hedgehog "Hero", but my frustration over trying to connect to the not so live part Xbox360 was just beginning. I had gotten my Linksys WRT300N Wireless Router all set up days prior to Christmas, so that when the Xbox 360 was set up, it would be just a click away from heading online to test out the games. The last thing I needed to do was attach my Xbox 360 Wireless Adapter and head online….or so I thought.
Upon clicking the Xbox Live button through my Xbox Dashboard, I kept getting an error saying that a connection to the internet could not be found. I was puzzled. I had done everything I needed to do to connect, so I began going through my Xbox 360 manual to figure things out. When I finally found that the error was coming up with a DNS failure, I put a call into Xbox Support to see if they could help me figure out what was going on.
You automatically get a computer that asks you to tell him what you need and he tries to troubleshoot, I decided I wanted to speak to a live person, so I simply said, “Customer Service Xbox 360 Console” and was promptly taken to a human being. The young lady seemed eager to help me as she went through a list of options to try to troubleshoot my problem. I spent about 60-90 minutes on the phone with her, running up and down the stairs between my computer and the Xbox, manually typing in numbers, resetting the router, modem and console and then trying and trying again to get the Xbox to connect. No dice. Finally she asked me my ISP provider, to which she told me was not on their list of compatible service providers. She suggested I contact them the next day to discuss this with them.
The following day, I contacted my ISP, who gave me alterative DNS #’s to manually input into my Dashboard and confirmed that they do not support any of the gaming console’s that connect to their live counterparts. However, he told me that he knew 100% that many people in my area connect to Xbox Live through my ISP. I found this to be true by searching the internet and finding gamertags by other members of my town.
I contacted Xbox Support again, but this time encountered a young male with such a heavy accent, that I could hardly understand him. He seemed very annoyed with me and simply insisted that I could never connect to Xbox Live because my ISP was incompatible. I explained about others in my town connecting through the same ISP, but he continued to reiterate what was on his script. He asked which router I was using, and upon telling him, he told me that it too was incompatible. He suggested I contact Linksys and ask them to open 3 ports for me, which he gave me. My time with him on the phone was about 30 minutes.
I then contacted Linksys and again encountered a male with a heavy accent that I could hardly understand, however he seemed very eager to help me. We went through opening the ports and he gave me step-by-step instructions that I implemented through my computer. I then went back upstairs to the Xbox and tried to connect, this time getting both a DNS failure and the system not finding my wireless connection. He then placed me on hold to speak to a Senior Technician, and then reconfirmed that my Linksys Router was incompatible. Time spent on the phone with him was about an hour.
I finally decided to search around the Xbox website to find a listing of what Xbox considered “compatible routers.” Sure enough, mine was not listed. If you will be hooking up your Xbox to a wireless network, I strongly suggest going to Xbox.com and finding a compatible router prior to just purchasing one on your own.
In the coming weeks, I will be purchasing a compatible router and will hopefully find a way to connect to Xbox Live. In the meantime, I will be testing out the games we have for the console and learning the in’s and out’s of game playing.
If you are an Xbox Live gamer, I appreciate any advice you can give on ensuring I can connect to Xbox Live without having to go through the troubles of being tossed around from support person to support person.
Posted by Shannon Nelson on December 27, 2006 8:55 PM
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