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Q: Can I configure my Xbox 360 to use an alternate MAC address?

A: I recently had a situation where I needed to connect an Xbox 360 to a free public Wi-Fi  that required you to accept an agreement in a web browser before you could get access to anything. There's no browser on the Xbox 360, so there's no native way to do this. I spoke to some colleagues and we came up with several solutions, including:

  1. Connect to the wireless network using a PC, accept the agreement, then connect the PC to the Xbox 360 via Ethernet and use Internet Connection Sharing to give the Xbox access.
  2. Use an external wireless adapter. Connect it first to the PC, accept the agreement on the PC, then move the wireless adapter to the Xbox.
  3. Connect to the wireless network using a PC, accept the agreement, then disable wireless on the PC and give the Xbox 360 the MAC address of the PC's wireless adapter.

The last approach was interesting, and it's actually easy to change the MAC address of an Xbox 360:

  1. Under My Xbox, open the System Settings application.
  2. Navigate down to Network Settings.
  3. Select your Wireless Network.
  4. Select Configure Network.
  5. Select Additional Settings.
  6. Select Alternate MAC Address.
  7. Enter the new MAC Address (copied from the PC) and press Done.
  8. Exit all the menus.

If you copy the MAC address from a PC, remember that you can't have that PC connected to the same wireless network as the Xbox at the same time.

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