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Time and time again, I have heard all the stories about how expensive the wireless adapter is for the 360. I have heard salespeople in Best Buy and Fry’s Electronics use it as a way to sell another system like the PS3. I have heard people at EB Games drool over selling the used versions when they get them, because they have a huge markup. But surprisingly, I have never heard anyone mention the simple, yet effective way to get Wi-fi for your 360. Take a look after the jump to see how you can get one of the pictured above Linksys Bridges to get your 360 hooked up wirelessly for about $25, and about a half hour of setup.

First question is does it really work? Well, of course it does, because I have been using the same solution for about 2004, with my original Xbox and then I just migrated it to my system selector so it works with the original one and my 360.

So where do we find the Linksys WET11 Wireless B Bridge device at a low cost price? Why Ebay of course. Just go to www.ebay.com and search for WET11, and I guarantee you will get a ton of hits. Don’t worry about the version, because both units work. In my case, I own v1.0, and it works great. As for an example of the price, check out this auction, one of many.

Once you pay and get it shipped to you, you may have to make a firmware adjustment. To do this, you need to download the Firmware update tool. There are two versions depending on the version of the bridge that you have. Here is the main download page for the bridge. Here you will find two useful tools. One is the firmware, which you need to have current to make the solution work for your Xbox 360, and the setup software, which you need to make the device connect to your network.

The firmware tool is a self installing tool that will guide you through the process. I would give some screen prints, but it would only backdate my device (I have done some other modifications beyond the scope of this article), which would be counter productive. After you run the firmware update, you will then run the setup tool. Here you give the device a fixed IP address on your network and set up WEP. It only supports WEP, so that might be a problem with some newer routers. The Wireless G Bridge will support WPA and WPA-2 I think, but it is about as expensive as the 360 adapter. Once you get it setup, unplug the device and let it reset.

From there, you just have to browse to the web interface and select MAC Address Cloning. Depending on your bridge version, this option may be in the setup options, but if not, just enter the IP address in your browser and find the option on the third or fourth tab in the menus. Apply that setting and let the device reboot. Now you have a $25 Wireless solution.

I would like to get some pictures of this, but I do not have a spare device to do it with at this time. But if enough people request it, I can purchase one or a user can send one with the settings they want and I can make a video of the whole process. And below is a picture of my working, yet dusty Linksys Bridge. I had the v1.0 version and have firmware revision 1.54. One more note – streaming audio, pictures and video works great with no stuttering if you use Windows Media Player 11. But you will have some problems using the media extender functions.