Microsoft, you have ONCE AGAIN proven that your ability to grind my gears is truly infinite.
Submitted for your approval…one Xbox 360 with a defective wired NIC. I knew this fact as soon as I began troubleshooting his console, because, great gaming consoles though they may be, the quality with which they are assembled (as well as the parts used therein) is abysmal.
That’s okay. We already know that your console’s hardware blows. I have an Xbox 360, and I love it. I’d buy another one. Of course, it’s been collecting dust in my sock drawer for 3 months, because all my recent gaming has been on my MacBook Pro, but regardless, my Xbox 360 retains a special place in my heart. Probably because I waited in line all fucking night for it. In November 2005. In the freezing rain. HAPPY TIME!
But I digress. The reason for my (current) displeasure with Microsoft lies in the solution provided by an Xbox 360 phone rep (CSR) when asked about the aforementioned wired NIC.
I am a university residential network technician. Basically, I fix shit when it breaks. When I was called out the other day to investigate an Xbox 360 that wasn’t connecting to the network, I knew, immediately, that the problem was not with the network, but with the NIC on the Xbox. When an Xbox gets a network connection, much like in Windows, the Xbox OS will tell you that the physical connection is active. The connection was working on this gentleman’s laptop, on the same port, with multiple cables. XBox? Multiple cables? Nada. No link light, no connection, nothing on the switch. Bad wired Ethernet.
I am okay with CSRs assuming complete customer ignorance. I sat and listened while my customer worked with the CSR, and went through all of the same troubleshooting steps I went through, also to no avail. I began to assume that the CSR was going to go ahead and authorize the repair on the Xbox, when he made one last suggestion.
“Sir, do you have a PC nearby?”
“Yes, we tried connecting it to the same port, and it was working fine.”
“Can you go to your PC please and tell me the operating system?”
At this point, I did the raise-one-eyebrow thing. I’m pretty good at it.
“Sir,” the CSR said, “can you please open your command prompt?”
At this point, I knew exactly what the “solution” was going to be, and sat and watched, in horror, as the CSR explained to my customer how to spoof his PC’s MAC address onto his Xbox, on my network. I have multiple problems with this solution.
1: The solution didn’t work. In fact, the computer working on the same Ethernet port that the Xbox was not getting a connection on should’ve been a red flag to the CSR, indicating that the problem was with the Xbox. They call it the “physical” layer because you know there is something “physically” wrong with the device when it doesn’t show a “physical” connection, capice?
2: Our network, like many university networks, uses MAC authentication and bypassing, and trying to “fool” it causes problems. Our equipment does not take kindly to multiple devices acting like one device, and our CSRs are not trained, nor should they be, to look for this issue if someone is being continually kicked off the network because our management server doesn’t know what the fuck, which brings me to my next and most important point.
3: The user doesn’t know what they’re doing. There was no explanation on the part of Microsoft on what the user was actually doing with their actions. If the user doesn’t understand what they’re doing in the first place, there’s no way they’re going to know how to undo it, which creates more problems than it solves. This “solution” is actually a terrible, terrible customer service philosophy.
Let’s say, for example, one of my customers called Microsoft support, not knowing for some reason that they can register their device online, or call our call center, and the CSR led him through the spoofing process. Great! It works! For…a few minutes. Then he calls us because he keeps getting kicked off, and we look like crap because our CSRs cant figure out the problem, because they’re not trained to, and the customer doesn’t know or understand what he did, and ends up even more frustrated.
So now both companies look bad, and he has a broken Xbox, which, I think, is the price of putting a bandaid on a bullet hole.
4: Maybe it’s the “networking guy” part of me, but telling students to spoof their MAC addresses generally doesn’t sit right with me. If this is really what Microsoft thinks about network security, why should I buy their products?
Or, maybe I’m just becoming paranoid. Fuck it, I’m moving to Wyoming. NOBODY CAN GET ME THERE.
Wouldn’t spoofing a MAC address bypass any ARP caching problems the switch might be having?
How did the call end? Did Microsoft give in?
The switch wouldn’t be the issue, in this case – our management server binds MAC addresses to the end user’s account. This is cool, because it prevents users from having to login to the network multiple times. The system looks for the MAC address. If it sees that “two” are on at the same time, it kicks one on a FIFO basis.
Do not ask me how this works, it is a secret. In fact, I do not know how it works.
And yes, Microsoft authorized the repair on his Xbox.
Does my mac adresse change if I upgrade my computer with some other hardware? For example change the graphic card?