Be Excellent To Each Other

Hey everyone,

I've just got myself one of those 'wireless network' things that I've heard so much about, and I'd like very much for my Xbox 360 to be part of it. Except: I don't really want to pay over the odds for one of the official adaptor thingys. I understand there are cheaper alternatives that can be used; could anyone be so kind to point me in the right direction?

Ta, and stuff.

me too, possibly.

Your two options, really, are:

• Powerline networking or
• wireless bridge

Neither is particularly cheaper than the offical 360 adaptor, but they offer more flexibility (e.g. they work with anything, not just the 360, and the powerline ones might get a better signal than the WiFi adaptor could manage).

Plus, you're not getting gipped paying £40 for a USB adaptor. That's a win in my book.

Your third option is to have your wireless router near you 360 (connected by ethernet cable) and let everything else connect wirelessly to it.

Thanks, those ebuyer links were exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for taking the time to reply, everyone.

I have a wireless network, but didn't fancy paying for the adaptor for the 360. So I got a long piece of cat-5 cable that I found in a skip, and threaded it through the attic from the router down into the living room. Still, it's not wireless. so this answer is entirely useless.

SAVE MONEY on expensive Official Xbox 360 Wifi adaptors by buying an off-white cigarette lighter, painting a mini Hamlet cigar grey and gluing it onto the lighter at a perpendicular angle. Every time you switch on your 360, tell yourself they are performing 'maintenance' or that you have been 'banned' and that's why you can't get online.

Buy a cable, I got a 25m cable for about £18 off amazon I think

Its more then enough goes up 2 flights of steps and will be more reliable then the unwired option.

£18 for 25m of Ethernet is daylight robbery! Probably about a river on eBay.

Beats paying 60 for the wireless thingy tho.

I bought it when I had money, so im not too fussed, definately got my moneys worth out of it

No. 321 in 'Signs you may have been playing too much poker'

Oh, the fun of wiring up the house, eh?

Wires and stairs don't mix.

I actually forget how we got the wires up the stairs... I do recall that I had to open my bedroom door with care to avoid snagging it...

Hah, yes. Oops. I'm breaking these fingers in for a fat guy.

Uhh, I don't recall. I know we had to go around four door frames due to the weird layout of our house. I still have that cable; if memory serves, we used a 50m spool from Maplins and only had enough left over for a couple of patch leads. It's damned long, and untangling it is always a highlight whenever I have to use it.

Fast powerline plugs are expensive.

Gaywood: Those 85MBit ones are less than an Xbox wireless adaptor

Indeed, but it's 85Mbit like I've got a 20MBit Internet connection - it never happens. The 200MBit ones are a better buy, but they are over £100.

Well, that saved some time

Yeah, they are. More so now than two years ago, weirdly - I definitely only paid £40 each for my netgear 200mb/s homeplugs, and they seem to be about double that now.

I'm looking into these at the moment. Ebuyer have a pair of 85Mbps (or what ever) for around £37 and I've been able to pick a couple of 200Mps off from ebay for around £45.

But the price does seems to have jumped for some reason.

EDIT: I, also, have never seem to be quite convinced with Wireless bridges. I've played with several but I've never been sure when they come to gaming.

I've remembered, now. From the lounge where the routers were, it snaked up the INSIDE of the stairs to somehow reach the main upper landing, where it pluged into a switch. Then the wires were run along the skirting boards into the bedrooms, including a really long stretch from the switch to my bedroom door.