Problems with ICS and Xbox Live

[liamb2001]

Hiya,
Ive got my Netgear DG834GT router upstairs rigged upto my PC / wired and another PC downstairs connected via a Wireless card,now i know that these sky routers arent the best wifi routers in the world but it does its job <<slowly>> !!

Anyway, recently i decided to bring my xbox 360 from upstairs via wired connection to downstairs on my big HDTV, via a loopback cable plugged into my computer (which uses wireless to connect to the net). After messing around for a while i managed to get on Xbox live this way and it wasnt too bad, didnt have a great connection but it worked. Anyway the next day i got up to have a go and it wouldnt connect and i found i had to repair my Wireless Network Connection everytime i wanted to go onto live

Not happy with this i decided to have a play around including resetting my router but now i cannot get it to enable ICS at all, my downstairs computer gives the below error everytime i try try to enable Internet Connection sharing.

"An error occured while internet connection sharing was being enabled
internet connection sharing cannot be enabled
A Lan connection is already configured with the IP address that is required for automatic addressing"

I have tried everything i can think of with no avail !!

Can anyone tell me what im doing wrong please ??

thx

Liam

[naza911]

Ok, seems simply enough of a problem but will take some setting up. Basically what ICS does is make your computer into a router, by setting up a service which gives devices which connect to it IP address's and then routing traffic to the computer internet connection.

By default the IP range it uses is 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.255, which is the same as the sky router. What the error is saying is that the IP it wants to use is not available, and so it will not set-up ICS.

If you really want, you can set it up, by:

1) Go into router setup by typing 192.168.0.1
2) username and password are: admin & sky
3) Click 'Advanced'
4)Click 'LAN IP setup'
5) Change the first 'LAN TCP/IP Setup' to 192.168.1.1 from 192.168.0.1
6) Leave the subnet mask
7) Make sure 'Use Router as DHCP Server' is selected and change starting address to: 192.168.1.2 & ending address to 192.168.1.255
8) Apply the changes. Then repair the network connection. Your router config page would have changed IP to 192.168.1.1 and your IP to 192.168.1.xxx, but ICS should work now.

[liamb2001]

arrr i had actually tried different ips but ened up changing back, thats worked perfectly and got everything else back on the net too, cheers pal appreciate it

[liamb2001]

hiya, as soon as i come back to it wether its an hour later or a day later, my xbox says it cant connect, i have to disable ICS then enable it again in order to get xbox live on again

any ideas how i can fix this ?

[naza911]

Have you got any firewall (other then windows firewall), Anti - Virus Installed. Something must be changing somewhere to cause this.

[liamb2001]

hiya, no just windows firewall. i find that either restarting windows or disabling and re-enabling ics seems to fix it, but its quite annoying as i can turn the xbox off then back on and it wil not connect even though the pc has been hapilly connected throughout that time without being switched off

any ideas ?

[naza911]

Ummm....The fact you need to do that means that the configuration needs to be set again. As its for gaming, using Ethernet would be advisable, but I have a feeling that this is a problem with the Xbox rather then your PC. I could be wrong, because I have limited experience with ICS, I only used it for a day for a PC and got rid of it because of all the problems that It caused.

Powerline adapters would be the best way if you cannot get your router close to the Xbox. These ones are fairly cheap.

Advent Powerline Ethernet adapter at PC World - Buy cheap Powerline Home Networking - Advent Powerline Ethernet adapter Powerline Plug

Failing that, if you really want some cheap ones, BT Vision packs come with some. Lots of these boxes are being sold on ebay for £10 because you cannot use the TV function without being a BT Broadband customer.

[liamb2001]

ill give these a try, sorry to sound stupid like, but how do they work when you buy them do you get two of them or what ? also how would i go about getting them both on the network downstairs if my 1 ethernet port is used up
cheers