Xbox Live through Airport Express and Laptop?

I did the google thing, but to no avail for my question. I had an easy (for me) setup at my old place. I was on a wireless network and had my 360 connected to my laptop. I could play on Live fine.
Now I moved for the summer and the router we were using wasn’t mine. My new place has an Airport Express. I haven’t even heard of it until I ran into this problem. I’ve been researching all day though.
I thought that this Airport Express could work as a router as well. I’m using a wireless network on my laptop through it. Now the 360 is connected to my laptop but I’m having trouble setting everything up. I keep getting a 360 error saying that I can’t connect to network hardware using a static IP address. I’ve tried automatically entering it and manually from the settings. I’ve added a digit to the last part of the IP and still nothing. I tried setting the Airport Express to bridge mode and nothing changed. The original setting was “share a public IP address”. the xbox live suggestion of turning it off and waiting did nothing either.
My questions are:
Is it possible to do what I did before with the Airport Express?
What settings need to be changed either for the Express or my 360?
Thanks in advance for this extremely frustrating problem.
Answer #1
from a search on internet : Is your Airport Express in bridge mode (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=108038#2), or is it acting as a router itself? If it's acting as a router itself, then you have two routers between it and the outside world, as well as between it and the XBox 360.
Your XBox 360 should be connected to the router. Your setup should be
Internet connection --> Router --> Airport Express in bridge mode, and Xbox 360 }}}} Laptop
Trevor
I believe my Airport Express is acting in bridge mode. I believe to get it into bridge mode you disable the "distribute IP addresses" option. This option is not active with the Express.
you might also want to read this : http://forums.mactalk.com.au/28/21995-wired-xbox-360-thru-airport-express.html
And since you move to a new place , do you have the same ISP?
Does this isp give you more that 1 ip? (otherwise you couldn’t connect at the same time multiple system , you would had to reboot the modem each time it’s plugged to a new machine(so it can give a different single ip)
Answer #2
Thanks for the reply. I’ve been up all day working on this and ran into those 2 sites. The first one seems to still require a router and not just use the Airport Express. The second looked like it had a solution, but It was for a Mac and I’m on a PC. There was also a link on the second site that made it seem like its not possible.
I was under the impression that the the AE could work like the same old Linksys router I was using. The only solution I see know is to move the 360 into the room with the modem and just plug it in with an ethernet which isn’t what i wanted. I’m not sure about your suggestion. Looking at the IP through the Airport Base Station Agent they give one value. Looking at the network connection properties of the wireless network through Vista, they give a different value. I’ve entered them both into the 360 and I still get a message about the static IP address.
Any more suggestions would be appreciated.
Answer #3
For the ip , I was saying , if you internet provider give you more than 1 ip at a time , like me I have 3 ip , so I can connect simultaneously 3 pc on internet. Otherwise if you internet provider only give you 1 ip , you can only connect 1 machine at a time (so that’s why your xbox can’t connect , because your pc get the ip first..) If so you would need a wireless connection for the xbox
Now if you know your internet provider give you more than 1 ip , I guess(from what I read) you should try to set “distribute IP addresses” ON , on your airport express
Because from what I understand the connection seem to work , but your xbox can’t receive a proper IP
You could try to wired your xbox360 with a cross-over cable to your laptop
Cross-over cable are the same as normal LAN cable , except you’ll see that the color aren’t at the same place (a normal lan cable have the same color each side of you put them side by side)
Cross-cable are used to hook up 2 pc without the need of a hub/router
BUT again.. if before your set up was working I’m pretty sure the problem come from the Airport Express or the new router