[25892] in resnet
Questions about XBox gaming
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Margaret Landsparger)
Tue Feb 1 12:39:43 2011
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <983022877.1938481296581948686.JavaMail.root@zcs-mbs04.it.mtu.edu>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 12:39:08 -0500
Reply-To: Resnet Forum <RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu>
From: Margaret Landsparger <margaret@mtu.edu>
To: RESNET-L@listserv.nd.edu
In-Reply-To: <502830159.1715591296577245186.JavaMail.root@zcs-mbs02.it.mtu.edu>
I put this question to the experts - my student employees. This is what one of them came up with.
--
Margaret Landsparger
ResTech Coordinator
Michigan Technological University
DHH 123
(906) 487-1754
margaret@mtu.edu
----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Kevin Newland" <knewland@mtu.edu>
To: margaret@mtu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 11:20:45 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [PacketTroopers] Any info you can provide?
If an Xbox 360 is to game on the Internet, you must subscribed to Xbox Live and have a gold account. This is generally why people would NEED to use a LAN game... to avoid the fees of Live. In this situation, you can play other people in the halls even if they are on different subnets or VLANs, but they must be in contact with Microsoft's servers before a connection can be negotiated. All traffic then goes to Microsoft before reaching any of the other Xbox gamers. This method injects unnecessary lag when you could be playing on the local network.
After a little investigation I learned that the Xbox 360 is doing a layer 2 discovery when it starts searching for a LAN game. This confirms that there is no way for cross VLAN LAN games with the Xbox.
After speaking to Xbox support they confirmed that the Xbox gaming occurs using IPv4, so this would imply that the devices would need to be on the same subnet if they are to connect to each other. If the schools don't allow cross-subnet traffic this would need to be changed or used the following workaround.
Depending on the particular school's registration system, people could just manually set their IP addresses to an unused private range that is unused on the network. e.g. 192.168.45.1\24 keeping their devices on the same subnet and bypassing the need for possible firewall/routing changes at core routers. (I'm not saying this is easy, just a possible workaround.)
There are no citations... this is off the top of my head. So, if there are any other questions it might be better to reach out to me personally.
--
Kevin Newland
knewland@mtu.edu
Residential Technologies Support (ResTech)
Computer Network and System Administration (CNSA/TCSA) Major
Michigan Technological University
----- Original Message -----
From: "Margaret Landsparger" <margaret@mtu.edu>
To: rescon-l@mtu.edu
Sent: Tuesday, February 1, 2011 9:48:50 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [PacketTroopers] Any info you can provide?
I have a couple of peer resnet people who are having issues at their schools with xboxs being able to play with each other. Here is what they have had to say. Can any of you offer any insight?
****************
I'll start off by saying I don't have an Xbox. I know nothing about them. I'm also not a network admin or engineer, though I do know a little about that side of things.
So we've got students with Xboxes here on campus (go figure, right?). Many of them are friends and like to play games against each other. They all suffer from the "Strict NAT Type" issue that Xbox Live warns them about. As such, they are unable to play games against one another across VLANs.
Do any of you have any suggestions for how we could make it easier for our students to play games against each other? It's a common complaint here. Ideally, it would require little to no work on the networking side.
*********************
I'm not 100% sure how the Xbox decides whether a peer console is
considered "LAN" or "Internet", but through all of my observations, it
seems to be subnet-based. The problem we've seen is that our ResNet is
all public address space, and sometimes there are multiple subnets per
VLAN, which leads to people across the hall not being able to play LAN
games. (At least that's my best theory at the moment.)
The whole cross-VLAN thing is another issue I think related to how VLANs
work... and that's about the end of my "just enough to be dangerous"
network knowledge.
I would be very interested to know how the whole LAN vs. Internet logic
works in the Xbox.
*********************
--
Margaret Landsparger
ResTech Coordinator
Michigan Technological University
DHH 123
(906) 487-1754
margaret@mtu.edu
___________________________________________________
You are subscribed to the ResNet-L mailing list.
To subscribe, unsubscribe or search the archives,
go to http://LISTSERV.ND.EDU/archives/resnet-l.html
___________________________________________________
