WARNING
This information is provided with no warranty of any kind-- USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. It is provided here because an answer was not found on the web that was satisfactory short of "reinstall windows".
XBOX and XBOX 360 DHCP Issues?
This topic may not seem like what you would expect on a website like ours. However, we have a growing number of XBOX 360 enthusiasts within our firm. In fact, the President of TekOps, Inc. was the President of the Official Microsoft XBOX User's Group of Colorado (COXUG) before the 360 and had monthly meetings at Microsoft's offices (and LAN parties!!! Yaaaayyy!!!) every month.
One of the issues that has popped up occasionally and we've never seen a good answer is-- If my XBOX or XBOX 360 is on my home network and I have a DHCP Server why won't it pick up the DHCP address? Or worse: It used to work and now it doesn't, why?
Most of the answers we've seen on the web are "guesses" not fact. So, we ran into this situation and found that every other system at the site of all types (mac, pc, xp, vista, windows mobile, appliances and other devices, sunos sparc and intel, linux (many versions), xbox, xbox360) could all pick up DHCP. But not this one XBOX 360. Another XBOX 360 on the same network worked every time without fail. This one XBOX 360 worked without fail for a year and then stopped working reliably one day.
We observed:
- This issue had previously happened on this same network wiring leg with an original XBOX but went away when we plugged the 360 in so we thought the XBOX was flakey.
- This problem did not show up until we changed out a DLINK 24-port 100/Mbps switch for a CISCO 3524 XL. Considering these are the folks that "routing and switching" we thought this was very interesting.
- No other device was having an issue including the other XBOX 360 or 2 other XBOXes.
- There were no network errors on that port according to the CISCO 3524 XL
Here's what we tried:
- We put a sniffer on the network and saw the 360 issues DHCP queries and we reliably saw the DHCP server respond, but the 360 would ignore the response.
- We tried both a windows DHCP server and a UNIX DHCP server. Same problem.
- We could hard-code an IP in the 360 and it would work fine.
- We did go to the network configuration menu in the XBOX 360 and told it go Reset to Factory Default. Immediately it picked up a DHCP address and worked. We power cycled the unit a couple of times and it worked each time. The next day it did not.
- We ultmately moved the network cable to the back of the SoHo router (LAN side), bypassing the switch and it has worked reliably ever since (it still get's it's DHCP from the UNIX DHCP Server, not the SoHo router).
We did not try and should have tried:
- Plugging a different device in (we had not because previously an original XBOX had the same issue on this network leg)
- Trying a different port on the CISCO 3524 XL.
- Trying the DLINK 24-PORT SWITCH again to see if the condition went away
Conclusion
Very bizarre, no one thing stands out. It does not appear to be a wiring problem unless there is some undiscovered issue because we are using the same cabling, plugged into a different switch and it works. It does not appear to be a DHCP server problem because no negligent behavior was observed and it works reliably now. It does not appear to be a "Microsoft Interpretation of the Standards" or "Microsoft favoring a Microsoft DHCP Server" because it works reliably now and had previously.
We believe it it some kind of transient incompatibility or timing issue between the switch and the XBOX 360. We have no tools within 360 that we can use to determine what if any part of the datagrams it received.
Recommendation
- Try the steps we tried.
- Try the steps we did not try but identified.
- One or more of these will lead you to a solution that works.
Your TekOps, Inc. Engineering Team!
XBOX LIVE: tekops
