UKH

Hi guys,

I'm a little stumped and wondered if anyone could help.

I recently got frustrated by consistently slow internet speeds 3-9mbps down and 0.4mbps up from Plusnet for the last 16 months. I finally got around to doing something about it. Engineer came out and fixed an issue then claimed the line should be running at 24mbps given I'm 125m from the exchange. Great! But no. Not so simple... three more engineers later and it is no better, Plusnet blamed BT... BT blamed Plusnet though they found a new issue each time they came out. My suspicions lie with BT.

Anyway, was all getting a bit silly so I just decided to end my contract (Plusnet were very good about it) and signed up for Three Homefi ... wifi over the mobile network. Arrived the next day and getting 27mbps down and 5mbps up. Awesome!

All going swimmingly until I tried to connect my Xbox 360 to the Huawei B311 router (yes, I know, sadly I had no choice but Huawei) so I can watch Netflix on my TV... the Xbox sees the network with plenty of strength but won't connect. Have had a good and tried and few things but no luck.

Any suggestions from the techy folks on here?!

Thanks in advance.

"Won't connect" is a bit vague.

From your mention of "sees the network with plenty of strength", I assume you're trying to connect wirelessly. What stage in the process are you getting to? Does the Xbox display any error messages?

What troubleshooting steps have you already taken?

Is it worth trying to connect with an Ethernet cable? Should be pretty easy to move the router to within cable range of the Xbox, even if only temporarily as a troubleshooting step.

Use a network cable between the xbox and router?

Is the Xbox set to a static IP, rather than DHCP assigned address?

when you attempt to connect the Xbox to the wifi network, are there any error messages or output on screen that might give us an indication as to what might be going on?  I know it sounds obvious, but are you using the correct password? (I've had many a sweary moment thanks to either fat fingering the password, or just plain getting it wrong). Can other devices connect to the wifi? Have you fully powered down the Xbox and restarted it? I know that 'turn it off and on again' sounds like cop out, but sometimes that's all it needs.

Thanks all for your input so far.

Sorry, yes, to answer a few questions I should have addressed initially ... 

1) The connection fails and says "There's a problem with your connection. Let's try to fix it." The Xbox then suggests four courses of action:

Suggestion 1 is to disconnect and set up again. I have done this and have restored network settings to factory settings as per one the only google help I found (https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Gaming/Connecting-my-Xbox-to-EE-mobile-broadb...). A different network and router but same issue. Didn't work for me.

Suggestion 2 is to power down the router and try again. Which I've tried.

Suggestion 3 is an incorrect password. I've been super careful and tried five or six times. I've also tried the WPS password on the router.

Suggestion 4 is online help page which no longer exists.

2) I've tried manually inputting IP and other network settings. No luck

3) I've tried ethernet wired connection. All works fine.

4) Yes, all other devices seem to connect fine. I've got a 2010 macbook, an iPhone 8, three TP-Link smart plugs and two TP-Link Kasa Cam cameras on the network. According to the Huawei manufacturers specs I should be able to connect 32 devices. So there is plenty of space.

I'm at a loss really. I'm not particularly tech savvy!

I am not sure quite how to check this or what it means... but will do some research! Thanks

at this point i’d be looking at trying a known good xbox to see if it connects and if it does, your xbox wifi is probably faulty

It was working fine. I then changed from a plusnet router to a TP-Link router to see if that was causing the speed issues. No change in speed but Xbox connected fine. Then changed to the Three router and haven't been able to get it to connect. Will try and see if it connects to next door's network.

Ok, so next door aren't around this weekend to ask to borrow their wifi. However I got the Xbox to connect fine to the hotspot on my Three iPhone. The connection then broke between the phone and the internet rather than the xbox and the phone (or router in other case). This is because I dont have a tethering enabled in my Three Essential plan.

So, the Xbox wifi is working fine. The router is working fine with all my other gadgets. And the router and Xbox get on fine with an ethernet cable. But they wont work over wifi...

Hmmmmmmm.

I don't think the Xbox being set to a static IP was the problem because restoring the Xbox to factory settings should now have resolved that if it had been the issue.

It sounds like you've tried lots of the obvious troubleshooting steps.

I know some of the early Xbox 360s didn't have WiFi built in and you had to buy and connect an external adapter. Is yours one of these or built in? If it's an adapter, you could buy a new one.

You could try playing around with the settings on the router a bit. If you don't know how to get into them Huawei should have some instructions for you. Basically, visit the router's IP address (lots of possibilities but could be 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1) from a browser on a machine that is successfully connected. Or some routers have a mobile app available these days. To see and edit settings, you might need an admin password which will be printed somewhere on the router. (While you're in the settings, if the default admin password is something stupid that sounds like it's shared with other routers, it might be worth changing it to a secure password of your own choosing.)

In the settings, you could see whether the router thinks the Xbox is properly connected. You could see whether the IP address the router shows for the Xbox is the same as the IP address the Xbox thinks it has. You could see whether any other devices have an IP address clash with the Xbox. You could see whether you can tweak any of the wireless network settings. It could be that the fairly new router is insisting on new standards that the fairly old Xbox isn't compatible with. You might be able to change that in the router settings. Have a play around and if it all goes horribly wrong, you can just reset the router to default settings.

Playing around with wireless settings will mean that the computer you're using to connect to the router will keep getting booted off and having to reconnect. You'll save some time if you connect that computer to the Ethernet port instead of relying on wireless. That's also a good option if you change a wireless setting in such a way that you can't connect by wireless any more.

I have an older macbook that won’t connect to 5G wifi but connects to 2G quite happily. Most new routers send out 2G and 5G signals simultaneously, does yours? have you tried connecting the xbox to the ‘other signal’? 

Sometimes you have to log into the wifi settings to activate the 5G, does yours?

Im no expert by any means but these ideas are just from past experiences 

I don't think this is the issue. The router only has the 2ghz band

Hi Luke,

Yes, had already played around a bit.

Interestingly I just tried leaving the network open and connecting. The Xbox connected fine to the router but then failed at the next stage of connecting to the web. Error message reads: "The DNS server can't resolve Xbox Live server names. This may be a problem outside your home network, and you may need to contact your ISP". 

I assumed the two issues are unrelated. But given that problem doesn't exist with an ethernet cable connection..... maybe they are? I'm out of my depth.

So starting with the former. Presumably my WPA2-PSK security was causing issues? The other options aside from open are WEP or WPA/WPA2-PSK. Are any of those preferred? I haven't tested to see if it works on each of them yet though

EDIT: WPA/WPA2-PSK also fails connection xbox to router. And from reading about WEP I think thats best avoided. It is also worth noting that the xbox is compatible with WPA2 because if you try to enter no password it says 'that is not a correct WPA2 password' or something.

Yes, that's right

That is all extremely weird and I'm kinda out of ideas. If it was mine, I would probably just keep playing around with settings a bit more but I don't have any more sensible, logical troubleshooting suggestions. If your Xbox 360 is the version with inbuilt WiFi then, according to the Googling I've just done, it should support exactly the same WiFi standards as your router.

Given that DNS seems to be the stumbling block when the network is left open, it might be interesting to try setting the Xbox to use a different DNS server, if the Xbox includes that option in its network settings. You could try "8.8.8.8" which is run by Google.

On the assumption that perhaps something has gone wrong with the wireless card in the Xbox or that there's some weird incompatibility between it and the router, you could try buying one of the external Xbox wireless adapters. They were meant for the older version that didn't have built in wireless but apparently they're compatible with the new ones too and will just disable the internal wireless card. https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-360/accessories/how-to-connect-xbox-360...

If you do buy one, make sure it's the black "wireless n" version. They seem to be available for just over a tenner. Who knows whether that will help. It's a weird problem.

As Luke90 has suggested, try manually setting the DNS server settings on the Xbox.  This might help:

https://appuals.com/fix-dns-isnt-resolving-xbox-server-names/

Ok thanks guys .

I have given up for now. A friend is a network engineer and going to come for a look at some point. I'll update when/if I know what the problem was and promise not to leave you all hanging!