Xbox 360 & Mac OS X internet connection sharing
For some inexplicable reason the Xbox 360 lacks integrated wifi, an oversight i can’t quite comprehend. I understand how the design team might have underestimated the importance of wifi for getting your console online back in 2005 when the Xbox 360 was originally released, but the fact that it hasn’t been added in one of the following revisions completely baffles me. The only plausible explanation would be that Microsoft’s wifi adapter sells like crazy, which is something i find hard to believe given its completely outrageous pricing – $100 for a glorified wifi usb dongle. The profit margin on these things must be somewhere around 90%.
Neither buying Microsoft’s overpriced wifi adapter nor running cat5 cables all across my apartment were an option for me. Fortunately, my Xbox 360 rests close to my MacBook and Mac OS X makes it easy to share your wifi connection over ethernet. Unfortunately the Xbox 360 doesn’t play nicely with OS X’s internet connection sharing because it has trouble obtaining an IP address from the DHCP server. But fret not! There’s a solution to this problem available at macosxhints.com:
- Start Internet Sharing if it’s not already running.
- In Terminal, type cp /etc/bootpd.plist /tmp/bootpd.plist
- Stop Internet Sharing.
- Open /tmp/bootpd.plist for editing using TextEdit or whatever.
- Locate this section of the file, near the end:
<key>reply_threshold_seconds</key> <integer>4</integer>- Change the value 4 to 0.
- In Terminal, type sudo cp /tmp/bootpd.plist /etc
- Start Internet Sharing.
- If you want to, check that your change to /etc/bootpd.plist hasn’t been reverted.
The cause of this problem is described in greater detail in this thread on the Ars Technica forums. If Mac internet connection sharing isn’t a viable solution for you, Gizmodo has a nice rundown of several more options for adding wifi to your Xbox 360.
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