360 and PC networking issue

[KermitM42]

so im running a netgear switch to divide up the internet between my roommates and i, and i noticed the other day that if my xbox and pc cannot be connected at the same time to the internet. like if im on xbox live ill have no internet connection, so ill repair the connection, renew the ip and it fixes it but then it drops me from live. it works both ways too.
any help or ideas would be great, thanks

*i know i also posted this in networking but at'ers from either could be helpful

 

[blurredvision]

Maybe your DHCP is setup to only give out so many IP's at a time? I'm not network savvy enough to help you troubleshoot over the internet, I'm more of a hands-on type of guy. Consider this a bump....someone either here or in the networking forum will certainly help you.

 

[RagingBITCH]

Are you using a switch or a router? Router will assign IP's out of a DHCP pool (assuming it's doing DHCP). A switch lets something else assign IP's based off DHCP and just handles the traffic. Sounds like (without knowing more information about your setup) that both the XBox and your PC are using or assigned to the same IP

 

[KermitM42]

thats what i thought too. and at first i was using just a switch no router, but then i put the router on with the switch and it did the same thing. and i checked and they are not using the same ip.

 

[RagingBITCH]

Err...so if you're just running a switch on your network, what's doing all the routing as the gateway/DNS/doing DHCP? Do you have a server somewhere in that setup?

Actually to make it easier to troubleshoot, list your *entire* networking setup so we can try to figure it all out. Might also do an ipconfig /all and list that information (from your PC) as well as the info in your network setup on your 360

 

[RaiderJ]

internet -> modem -> router -> switch -> computer/console

 

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by: KermitM42
thats what i thought too. and at first i was using just a switch no router, but then i put the router on with the switch and it did the same thing. and i checked and they are not using the same ip.

RaiderJ's diagram is quite correct: always connect the router to the modem if you must use multiple devices through the modem. Most folks don't need a switch under the router, but some of us oddballs use it either to support too many devices (for the router's ports) or to support a distant cluster of devices w/o running multiple long wires.

A MODEM can't communicate with multiple devices (w/o rebooting between device-switching, typically). The modem identifies its single connected device by the device's unique MAC id; it bonds to the first MAC id that it "sees" (as I infer it) and rejects communication from any later MAC id's it encounters.

A SWITCH is essentially transparent to the net -- almost like a wire-splice -- showing no MAC address. It presents the MAC ids of its connected devices with each of their msgs. As your computer and XBOX have different MAC addresses, the modem ignores the second, un-bonded device as it has no way to cope with message-switching to more than one device/MAC id.

A ROUTER has a MAC id of its own, so the modem only sees one device -- the router -- and has no conflict. The msg internals contain the routing information and the MODEM doesn't care about that as they are hidden under the single MAC id of the router.


An above GOTCHA might explain your results: all the modems I've had bond to the first-seen device. If, without rebooting the modem, you swap out one device (a switch) and put in another (a router), the modem's bond will remain to the first MAC id (your xbox or PC) and it will ignore the router until the modem's rebooted. Perhaps you switched setup w/o rebooting the modem afterward (they always advise leaving it off for 15-30 seconds). I don't grasp why you "put the router on with the switch", however, so some other confusion may be going on.

Connect the router to the modem; plug your computer and xbox into the router; use the switch only if the router lacks enough ports: in this case plug the switch into the router, not the modem.

While I don't have an xbox, I expect the above advice applies.