Want to setup an Xbox party and play 16 player Halo with all your friends? It is actually very easy to do and it is all explained here.
When you get together with your friends and connect a bunch of Xboxes or computers together to play video games together it is called a LAN party. LAN stands for Local Area Network. A lot of Xbox games also call this System Link. These techniques also work for Playstation 3, PS4, computer LANs, and any other consoles with LAN multiplayer.
You can connect as many original Xboxes, Xbox 360s, and Xbox Ones together as you want, but you need a copy of the game for each Xbox along with a screen to connect it to.
To play a game together you have to connect the Xboxes together. You can do this using an ethernet router, hub, or switch.
Connect each xbox to the router using a cat 5 ethernet cable (cat 4, cat 6, etc. all work too). An Xbox connected to the router can play games with any other Xboxes connected to the router.
If you have a wireless router you can connect them wirelessly instead. You can even have some Xboxes connected wirelessly and some connected with wires.
To play huge Halo and Call of Duty games you can connect 16 or even more Xboxes, but most routers and switches only have spots for 8 or less Xboxes.
You can connect an unlimited number of routers to each other so that you can connect even more Xboxes.
If you only want to connect two Xbox 360s or Xbox Ones and do not have a router you can directly connect them with an ethernet cable.
If you are using two original Xboxes you need to use a cross-over ethernet cable which were also sold as a Xbox System Link cables. You can also buy cross-over ethernet adapters that allow you to connect two standard ethernet cables to each other to be used as a patch cable. If you are feeling handy you can also create your own ethernet cross-over cable from a standard ethernet patch cable.
For buildings that have a built in networks it is possible to play Xbox LAN games with people in other rooms and buildings. If there are ethernet ports built in to the wall of your college dorm, class room, or office all you have to do is hook your Xbox up to the wall and you are ready to play. If it doesn't work it is probably because your school blocks unregistered devices from their network and you may need to register your xbox with your college. Just contact your helpdesk to do that, but if they say they do not officially support consoles on their network there is a way to get around it which is explained on the internet setup page.
You can play Halo CE system link games on Xbox 360 with other Xbox 360s and orginal Xboxes in the same game.
Halo CE supports up to 16 players but it only supports up to 4 Xboxes in a single game. So if you want to play 16 player Blood Gulch you need 4 players on each Xbox.
You can play most Xbox and Xbox 360 games over the internet. If you need help setting up your Xbox 360 for the internet there is a detailed guide here.
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