December 19^th, 2001 (12:00am) - If you’ve followed recent events in the XBox world, you have no doubt heard about the recent happenings in the realm of Xbox internet gaming. Playing Xbox System-Link games over the internet involves networking your XBox and a PC system with Internet access together on a LAN (Local Area Network), using the PC as a "gateway" to the Internet. In this article I will review in some detail the two currently available methods for playing System-Link games over the Internet, "XBox Gateway" and "GameSpy Tunnel". It must be said that, based on my personal experience with both of these solutions, neither is quite as satisfying as playing a System-Link XBox game over a real LAN or System-Link line due to performance issues - but if a true LAN multiplayer game setup is not feasible for you, there is fun to be had by playing Halo over the Internet using one of these methods.

What To Expect

Getting your XBox on the internet using these methods is definitely not for the novice or even the casual XBox gamer; it requires a not-insignificant amount of technical know-how and a bit of extra hardware. For this article to be of any use to you, you should be familiar with the following:

LANs, ethernet hubs, what they are and what they do for you
How to determine your PCs network settings (IP address, etc.)
Broadband Internet access (modem users stop reading now)
"System Link" is the official Microsoft terminology for networked XBox games NOT using Microsoft’s XBox Online service. The officially supported method for connecting XBoxes together for a System-Link game is to connect 2 XBoxes using a Microsoft "System-Link" cable (a cross-over ethernet cable). It is also possible to connect multiple XBoxes by plugging them directly into an ethernet hub. (Note: This method is not officially supported by Microsoft.) To play System-Link games across the Internet, you need to connect a PC with internet access and your XBox together on a LAN, using the PC to relay network traffic to/from your XBox across the Internet from other similarly connected systems. (Both PC/XBox setups need to be using the same packet-forwarding software; the XBox Gateway and GameSpy Tunnel systems are not compatible with each other). Because of the additional latency and bandwidth consumption introduced by this packet forwarding, performance of System-Link games over the Internet will almost always be worse than the same games played on a true LAN. As an example, Halo can require as much as ~1200 bytes/second of upstream bandwidth *per player on your local XBox*, and as much downstream bandwidth *per player in the game*, when you join someone else’s game. To play with no perceived latency, you will also need round-trip ping times of ~30ms or lower. As you can see, even the average DSL and cable modem connection will have a hard time meeting these requirements. The result, in the case of Halo, will be noticeable lag and/or stuttering in the game. It will typically not be as bad if you are playing on the system that created the game, but you’ll still notice some lag. For people who have already experienced true System-Link/LAN games of Halo, playing System-Link Halo over the Internet can be a rather underwhelming experience :O) Both XBox Gateway and GameSpy Tunnel are CPU-intensive packages; if you use either of these packages, run them on the fastest PC system you have available. Consider yourselves warned!

Now that you have an idea of what to expect, I’ll give a brief overview of both "XBox Gateway" and "GameSpy Tunnel", the two currently available methods of playing System-Link games over the Internet.

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