XBOX 360 disconnects randomly.

Hi everyone! My son plays HALO 3 on XBOX 360 live and sometimes when he is in the middle of a game it just disconnects and he is out of the game. Its not the same as getting booted by other players, (though that has happened too). When it happens the game portion of the screen goes kind of grey and player selection starts over. I am sure this is maddening to him and I would like to know if this is a common occurence. I am reasonably sure it is not a LAN problem since my computer stays connected during these events and he is still connected to XBOX live just not the game. Any Help?

 

i cannot imagine that it is much different than being connected to a game of Quake online. I often found that I would be booted from a game for any number of reasons. Latency, stronger signal players, full room, or just a brief interruption in the connection (which you would not notice on the computer during normal use). If it is happening constantly then I would probably call Microsoft or research online about it. I will look to see what I can find. I also noticed this problem playing SEAL's on the Playstation 2. Sometimes it just cut out and returned to the main screen. Was always during peak times though so it was probably related to congestion on the network.

 

Thank you, comperroruter for your response. My son says it happens in the middle of the most intense battles. I don't know if this is the same as peak use. Your experience sounds the same though. I notice you refer to your events in the past tense. Did you solve your prob?

 

Yes, I stopped playing online video games. hehe I will start again when they develop realistic virtual reality gaming and work out all the bugs. THEN I will have more interest in playing games like these.

 

How did you set up your 360-connection? What kind of encryption and bandwidth do you have? Wireless or wired?

Halo 3 eats bandwidth, and not having enough of it for a multi-player match can disconnect you. That goes for all 360 games.

 

Well, it could just be Halo's match making system since the last time I played I would be connected to rooms where I'd be the only one with a red ping. Have you tried setting up a static IP for your xbox. There a great guide here. Hope it helps you out.

 

If you think you can live with the decrease in security, you can also put he 360 in your router's de-militarized zone. Keep in mind though that when you do, you remove ALL security from the 360 and you essentially make an open gateway onto your home network. I would not recommend it as a permanent solution, but it works well as a part or trouble-shooting/problem diagnosing.

 

Well Thank You all, comperroruter, Mimsy and xMUSICxMANx for your various suggestions. In answer to your questions, I have a home network that has 3 hardwired desktops and a wireless laptop and then the 360 is connected with cat5 to my router. It shows up in the Network Magic diagram and as far as encryption and bandwidth I'm clueless. I also am concerned now about security. I was not aware that a 360 in the loop posed a security threat. Can you elaborate on this a bit? I will take any precautions needed as my machine holds sensitive data. My router uses 128, (or 104 as it were) bit WEP encryption. Thank you again Cmdr Chill

 

Technically it only poses a security threat if you drop all security on that particular device. If you hook it up with the same encryption levels as the rest of your network, then it has the same security as the rest of your network.

 

Hi Mimsy, forgive me if I'm being thick but how do you drop security on one particular device? Not that I want to, I just don't want to inadvertently. I had this network up and running for a while and run good security software on it but when I connected the 360 it just started working and I was given no options for securing that particular device. Do you think I'm OK?

 

I would strongly recommend you just find out which ports each game uses, and find out how to do port forwarding on your router instead. Switching a 360 to DMZ is a bit like saying "I'll leave my front door unlocked all the time so I don't have to use my key". It does make it very easy and convenient for you to get in and out of your house. And it does for everyone else as well.

What router are you using?