Usage (GUI-mode):
- in the settings tab, select the correct adapter as capture device and seelct your local IP address
- if you are in a NATed network (e.g. DSL) and your router supports UPnP activate this option in the settings.
- press “Start Engine”, XBSlink will now listen for incoming request.
- to join another player or XBSlink network, enter a host in the “Remote Host” field and send an announce.
- XBSlink will show info on all discovered nodes. If the ping time to a node stays “N/A”, the communication to this node can not be established properly.
- start hosting a game on your xbox or join another players game.
- in the chat tab you can talk with all connected XBSlink nodes
If you have problems with some games you can try to enable the “advanced forwarding of broadcasts” option. XBSlink will try to recognize more packets on the network. Some unrelated broadcast traffic might also be transmitted.
You can also tell XBSlink to always forward packets from certain network devices. Just add a MAC address to the list in the settings tab and enable the special MAC list. This features allows XBSlink to work as a proxy for other platforms as the original xbox or even for PC games that only support LAN connections.
The options “advanced forwarding of broadcast” & “enable special MAC list” are activated/disabled in real time even when the engine is already started.
Cloud List Feature:
- enter a cloud list server
- load the current cloud list
- select a cloud from the list and press “join/create”
- to create a new cloud, enter a new cloud name, maximum nodes in the cloud an an optional password and press “join/create”
Linux version:
To run XBSlink on a Linux OS you need to have mono and libpcap (v1.1.1) installed. Download the Linux package of XBSlink and extract it to a directory of your choice. Due to the nature of the pcap library you have to run XBSlink with root privileges. To start XBSlink enter the directory with the file “XBSlink.exe” in it and run “sudo mono XBSlink.exe”. Why is this an “.exe” file even we are not on windows? Well, XBSlink is a .NET application 🙂 You won’t need “wine” to run it.
If you don’t want to run XBSlink as root you can give mono low-level network acces with this command:
sudo setcap ‘CAP_NET_RAW+eip CAP_NET_ADMIN+eip’ /PATH/TO/MONO
Mac OS X version:
To run XBSlink on Mac OS X you need to have mono and libpcap installed. Download the Mac package of XBSlink and extract it to a directory of your choice. Due to the nature of the pcap library you have to run XBSlink with root privileges. To start XBSlink enter the directory with the file “XBSlink.exe” in it and run “sudo mono XBSlink.exe”. Why is this an “.exe” file even we are not on windows? Well, XBSlink is a .NET application 🙂
Command-line non-GUI mode:
If the program is run with at least one command line parameter XBSlink switches to non-GUI mode. To display a help message run “xbslink.exe -h”.
Once XBSlink is running the following commands are available:
- press “h” to display the help message
- press “q” to quit program
- press “l” to display the cloud list
- press “u” to show the list of connected nodes
All console messages are prefixed with a type indicator:
- “I:” informational message
- “C:” chat related message
- “D:” debug message (only in debug mode)
Available command line parameters:
XBSlink Version 0.9.5.3 Usage: XBSlink.exe [-h] [-l] [-s CLOUDSERVER] [-c CLOUDNAME] [-u] [-p PORT] -n NICKNAME -o IP -i CAPTURE_DEVICE_NAME -?, -h, --help show this help message -l, --list-devices list all available network packet capture devices -d, --update-check check online for program update -n, --nickname=VALUE set the nickname -s, --cloudserver=VALUE set cloudserver URL -j, --list-clouds list available clouds on cloudserver -c, --cloudname=VALUE connect to this cloud -m, --max-nodes=VALUE maximum clients in cloud. default is 10 -w, --password=VALUE set password for cloud -u, --upnp use UPnP to forward incoming port -p, --port=VALUE set the incoming port number. default is 31415 -o, --source-ip=VALUE bind to this local ip address. -i, --capture-device=VALUE name of network device for capturing packets