[sanford]

My home network looks like this: Cable modem connected to wired Linksys BEFSR41 router/switch which is servicing a wired digital telephony adapter, connected via uplink port to Airport basestation (of the "snow" 802.11b variety -- the second generation, I think) servicing a few Mac laptops and desktops with Airport or Airport Extreme cards. The Airport basestation is bridging wireless to wired only, NAT and DHCP are disabled. All NAT and DHCP are handled by the wired Linksys router. This works like a champ for all the Macs.

I presently have a game console, an Xbox 360, connected via ethernet cable to an airport-enabled iBook running OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). I'm using OS X's internet sharing function to share the iBook's wifi connection to my home network, thus allowing the Xbox to connect to the Xbox Live Internet service over the wireless network propagated by the Airport basestation without a wireless adapter specific to the Xbox. This is all the iBook is doing. This works fine for connecting to Xbox Live, so long as I may configure the Xbox to 192.168.2.2, it's gateway to 192.168.2.1 (presumably the iBook, a gateway created by Internet Sharing). Subnet mask is 255.255.255.0.

Here's the problem: I can't under this configuration get the Xbox to automatically configure via DHCP, presumably because it's on a subnet 192.168.2.x and can't contact the Linksys router DHCP server running on 192.168.1.x. This is okay fine, as I understand the iBook is doing NAT and Xbox just can't see the Linksys or vice versa with the iBook in the middle. But I have some software called Connect360 that allows the Xbox to share media (music and photos) with Macs, as if the Macs were Windows computers running Windows media sharing software. There are some known problems with this software and making connections between a Mac and the Xbox if the devices are on different media formats, like one on 802.11b and the other on wired ether. But I know this is not my problem, as when I had the Xbox connected via wire to the Linksys router, and a Powerbook connected via the Airport base that is in turn connected to the router, device discovery went without a hitch. Plus the inability to configure the Xbox via DHCP makes it unlikely this is a problem with Connect360.

So what I'm trying to do is just bridge with IPNetRouterX the airport interface on the iBook (the connection to my airport base which is in turn connected to the Internet via the Linksys router) with the iBook's wired ethernet interface. I've configured the bridge as in the documentation, and still no joy. Forget Connect360 for now, the Xbox still can't contact the DHCP server on the Linksys. I'm under the impression that this scenario will essentially just make a software version of the little hardware devices, the wireless to ethernet bridges, that can be used to make wired-only devices work on wireless networks. According to Microsoft hardware bridges will work just fine with the Xbox 360; indeed they made one for the original Xbox and certify that one as 100% compatible with the Xbox 360.

Any idea why in the world this won't work? Of course I've turned off Internet Sharing in OS X when using IPNetRouterX, etc.

Thanks

[sanford]

Skip it. OS X's BSD kernel doesn't support bridging in transparent mode. So while IPNetRouterX does support bridging of two network interfaces, it's not a transparent bridge, so the device(s) behind the IPNetRouter Mac are never going to behave like they're on the same subnet as the other devices on your network -- thus no contact with Linksys DHCP server, no Connect360, blah, blah. Downloading Linux now, which does support transparent mode bridging of network interfaces.

By the way, Airport Basestations just so happen to support transparent mode bridging, not necessarily common with wireless routers, and a handy thing to have.

And, yes, I've spent about 5 times the money in my time rather than just coughing up the $100 for the Xbox 360 wireless adapter. Go figure, but I'm on a mission now.