I don't undertand Xbox Live

kaji

I don't undertand Xbox Live . I have a gold membership and I'm connected to the internet but there's never anyone on the games I play. For e.g., today I played Red Dead Red. and Left4Dead2 and there were no games to connect to even though I was connected. Am I doing something wrong here!!

Kells...

Well if your ping is always 183ms you have to wait longer.

ibFoxer

kaji wrote: »

I don't undertand Xbox Live . I have a gold membership and I'm connected to the internet but there's never anyone on the games I play. For e.g., today I played Red Dead Red. and Left4Dead2 and there were no games to connect to even though I was connected. Am I doing something wrong here!!

I used to have the same problems, never being able to connect to games. To help determine whether your problem is the same as mine was when you try to connect to a game in RDR what happens? Do you get a message saying "we cant connect you etc"

kaji

foxerv1 wrote: »

I used to have the same problems, never being able to connect to games. To help determine whether your problem is the same as mine was when you try to connect to a game in RDR what happens? Do you get a message saying "we cant connect you etc"

Yeah it kept saying that when trying to connect to RDR but eventually I got in the game and there was no one else in it!

ibFoxer

kaji wrote: »

Yeah it kept saying that when trying to connect to RDR but eventually I got in the game and there was no one else in it!

At a guess id say its your NAT. Its probably set to moderate or strict, you need to get that sumbit*h open for quality gaming. Whats your isp?

kaji

Whats a NAT and ISP? I have 3 mobile broadband.

ibFoxer

kaji wrote: »

Whats a NAT and ISP? I have 3 mobile broadband.

That might be your problem, i'm not entirely sure 3 mobile broadband is good enough for xbox live. Open to correction on that though but AFAIK it's ping and latency are way off the prescribed mark

Have you considered another isp? Eircom or UCP perhaps? Possibly even WiiMax? (although not sure if they are any better than 3)

Willbbz

How are you connected to xbox live?

when I had 3 mobile broadband I connected my pc with the 3 dongle and then ran an ethernet cable from my pc to my xbox

If you're in the same situation I recommend you forward your ports on your pc so you can get an open NAT

Also don't expect the best connection for games as I never got the speeds that were advertised by 3 and the speeds varied from the time of the day due to so many people on the same exchange

foxerv1 wrote: »

That might be your problem, i'm not entirely sure 3 mobile broadband is good enough for xbox live.

Agreed but I don't think 3's service was intended for online gaming

Slugs

As far as I was aware, as a mate of mine has the same issues, you can't port forward the dongles. Could be wrong.

Kaji, the problem as well as the NAT, is the type of games you're trying to connect to. I dunno about RDR, but L4D2 servers are notorious for being fussy ****ers to deal with. I know plenty of people who had no problem connecting and hosting games on L4D, but L4D2 seems to have an issue with anyone with so much as a hint of high ping or terrible NAT. As well as this, (and fanboys can disagree with me all they want, but they know it's true themselves), the communities for these games would be no where near as big as those for some of the more "mainstream" titles, by that I mean Halo and COD. I strongly recommend picking up either or both of them, particularly if you want to get involved in online play.

TheMooseInNam

foxerv1 wrote: »

That might be your problem, i'm not entirely sure 3 mobile broadband is good enough for xbox live. Open to correction on that though but AFAIK it's ping and latency are way off the prescribed mark

Have you considered another isp? Eircom or UCP perhaps? Possibly even WiiMax? (although not sure if they are any better than 3)

Unfortunately, mobile broadband has been advertised to the public as a genuine alternative to DSL or ADSL broadband, which it is not! At best, mobile broadband should be advertised as a medium-band internet service. It suffers from high latency (poor ping times) and inconsistent data streaming (a solid connection is required for gaming).

Before I get jumped on, yes there's a few people that have been very lucky and successfully managed to play through a mobile broadband connection but they are in the minority.

I believe it's time Com Reg got their act together and forced all ISP's to advertise their service at face value and stop "blue-skying" customers with vague advertising jargon!

OK, my rant is over now, so I'll try and be helpful now. If you have to use a mobile-type broadband to access XBL, then there's a few things you can do to try and improve your connection.

Opening the ports is one.

Buy an external antenna for your dongle. The better the signal you have coming in, the more chance you have of holding a stream of data.

Move your dongle around until you establish the best connection possible, perhaps upstairs near a window, for example.

However, my best advice is to get rid of it completely and choose a decent DSL or ADSL provider. You won't believe the difference between mobile broadband and "proper" broadband