How to configure router to give XBox top priority and the most bandwidth?

Question

I have a "D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N" wireless router and an XBox 360 with the old-style wireless connection thing (usb attachment). I want to configure my router/network to give my XBox as much bandwidth as it wants, whenever it wants.

I have tried giving the XBox a unique IP (within my network) and then tweaking the router to treat that IP as a top priority application (using the router's QOS stuff). Problem is whenever I turn off the XBox, I can't connect to the network the next time I start it up. It seems the only reliable setting in the XBox is to use "Automatic" for the IP settings within the Network Configuration area.

Supposedly the D-Link ships with default settings that attempt to recognize a game console and give it top priority, but I've not seen good results (lots of stuttering/lag when someone else jumps online, etc).

Solution 1

You can try port forwarding if you haven't done so.

Give your Xbox a static IP (something like 192.168.1.55 so the dynamic IP service of your router doesn't assign the same IP to another device), then go into your router's port forwarding section not the QoS; the page is different for most routers but it looks like a giant table with the fields: rule, name, protocol, port start, port end, IP. Then create a rule for each port (name them xbox(number) so your can remember them), and forward these ports 53, 80, 88, and 3074, to the IP of your xbox that you have assigned.

So your table should have 4 entry like this that alternate with the different port numbers

rule = 1, name = xbox(1), protocol = all, port start = 88, port end = 88, I.P = Static IP of Xbox

rule - 2, name = xbox(2), portocol = all, prot start = 3074, port end = 3074, I.P. = ""

etc

Save these settings for each port, restart the router and xbox, and your bandwidth should be better.

QoS is more for when you have a shared network where two people are surfing the net while one is playing a game or streaming a video. This tells the router to give the most upload to the application or user using the most data. If you are competing for data then this is something to look into, but if your not, it's not vital.

Port forwarding is a bit different, data is sent to different IP's using different ports, the xbox live service uses many ports to send data to consoles but the most vital for console upload are the ones I mentioned. So by telling the router that all the data that these ports send and recieve should go to the xbox and the xbox service, it makes the connection better since no other application can interfere with those ports.

This make the static IP extremly important as the router needs a specific destination to send and recieve data, and if another device has the same IP as your xbox then the router doesn't know what to do.

Solution 2

QoS is the right choice. I don't know about the D-Link software, but I know that dd-wrt handles this just fine. I don't know if it's available in the D-Link firmware, but you may be able to set your QoS stuff using a mac address rather than an IP. that way you would still be able to use automatic address assignment.

The only reason I could think that would give you connection problems would be using a duplicate IP address. Try setting the static IP of your xbox to be on the upper end of your range. i.e. if your home network is numbered out of 192.68.1.0/24 space, try setting the xbox to be 192.168.1.200. This should take it out of the range of addresses normally used for DHCP.

Someone will un-doubtedly complain that this is a gaming question. I think it's a networking question.

Comments

[Admin]

nice! thanks! i'll give that a whirl... I agree on the nature of the question... is networking! easy on the ban hammer! FWIW, replace "XBox 360" with Roku or mac-mini or whatever