Alright I have experienced terrible connection problems lately while trying to play online. I am in a college dorm and my MAC address has been verified and everything. It says I am signed into xbox live but I cannot download anything at all. I am connect through a ethernet jack in the way and a ether net cord. Do you think it could be the cord? At first I did not have any problems but now I have tons of problems. Would buying a router and plugging it into the ethernet in the wall and then pluggin in a ethernet cable to my xbox work?

College Dorms most likely have a traffic filtering device in place to give Xbox's and PS3's the minimal amount of bandwidth possible. Sucks but is probably the case. I'm able to filter the traffic with a Linksys WRT54G and know the capabilities of corporate sized equipment.

Do you experience any issues with a computer in the same port?