XBox 360 USB Network connection

[boozyhughesy]

Hi there,
Does anyone know if you can connect a 360 directly into a modem/router via a USB link as uppose to Ethernet? should it just work straight away?? I know the wireless adaptor is USB so was guessing it should...

thanks,

Mike

[PJ S]

Would be powerful slow I'd have thought, especially for online gaming.
I suspect it would work, just not sure how well though.

Edited by PJ S on Tuesday 16th January 19:23

[ThePassenger]

It probably won't work. Most ADSL Modem/Routers when connected via USB require the host machine to have some form of driver installed. This is fine, except that nobody will have written a driver for the 360 (even if you could install it).

It'd be best to find either a USB WiFi adapter or a USB LAN adapter for the console (which is certified to work with the console) and use, in the case of the wired LAN, regular CAT5.

USB is more than capable of keeping up with the demands of a computer game, even USB1.1 has a top speed of 11mbps (which coincidently is also the max of 802.11b) which is faster than "8meg" broadband. I'd assume something like the 360 has USB2 ports which raises the bar to 480mbps.

[scorp]

USB has bad latency unfortunately, so not that good for games, i used to ping around 80ms in my Quake days using a crappy usb modem, and got it down to 20ms using ethernet. To get a little techy there is a low-latency mode in USB called isochronous mode but afaik its used only in cameras, modems should have used this mode, but a lot don't as it can drop packets. USB has decent bandwidth though (12mbps for 1.1 and a staggering 480mbps for 2.0).

You could in theory have a PC between the modem and the xbox and bridge the PC's ethernet connection to the modem connection. Or as ThePassenger says, use a wifi connection, which again, adds a little latency, but not that bad, i use wifi for my 360 and find most online games play without lag.

Edited by scorp on Friday 19th January 03:21

[spandexx]

Buy a router (£40), pop in the ADSL username and password and hey presto internet for all your household devices. Simply the use the 360s NIC. USB modems are a pain in the arse and should be thrown strait in the bin.