Networking¶

Xbox networking is fully supported. Connect to other instances of xemu and even real Xboxes, locally or over the Internet.

There are three network backends available to choose from in the xemu Network configuration dialog: NAT, UDP Tunnel, and Bridged Adapter. Which one you should select depends on what you'd like to do.

Attachments¶

Bridged Adapter¶

In this networking mode, the emulated network device is bridged to one of the network interfaces on your machine. This means that all traffic sent from the emulated network controller will be forwarded to your selected network interface, and xemu can receive traffic incoming on this interface.

With this mode you can easily set up a System Link session with a real Xbox by just connecting the Xbox to your computer with an Ethernet cable. Additionally, this mode can be used to connect with tunneling services.

UDP Tunnel¶

In this networking mode, all traffic that would be sent/received by the emulated NIC is simply encapsulated in UDP datagrams and forwarded to a remote host, which could be another instance of xemu or perhaps a real Xbox (see l2tunnel for more information). This is useful for quickly setting up a virtual LAN.

The xemu project provides multiple free servers you can use to play with other xemu users. Join the Discord community for more information.

NAT¶

In this networking mode, a full TCP/IP stack is running within xemu, and network address translation is used to route packets between the internal network and the outside world.

Like a router you may have at home, you can have xemu listen on specific ports and perform 'port forwarding' to the virtual Xbox. This can be used for example to connect to the virtual Xbox's FTP server. Find more info about port forwarding and FTP access here.

Troubleshooting¶

System Link session is not joinable¶

• Ensure all MAC addresses are unique. If you are using an EEPROM dumped from your real Xbox, xemu and your Xbox will have the same MAC address. You'll need to change one of them. You can blank the EEPROM line in xemu's Settings window to have it generate a new one for you, or you can use the EEPROM editor to change it.
• Ensure the game versions/regions/updates between the people playing are the same.
• If you are on Windows, ensure you're using the new npcap with WinPcap API-compatible mode, not the older WinPcap.
• Some Realtek cards have been known to be problematic. Try reinstalling your driver or use an alternative adapter.

My network adapter is not listed¶

• If you are on Windows, ensure you're using the new npcap with WinPcap API-compatible mode, not the older WinPcap.

Bridged Adapter Permission Problems¶

Important: You should never need to run xemu as the root user.

macOS¶

If you get a permission error when attempting to enable Bridged Adapter, you may need to update the /dev/bpfX permissions on your system. You can work around this by opening a terminal and executing the following command:

sudo chown $(whoami):admin /dev/bpf*

Linux¶

If you get a permission error when attempting to enable Bridged Adapter, you may need to update the executable capabilities to provide raw access to your network interface. You can do so with the following command:

sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin=eip `which xemu`