The recent ban-hammer on modded Xbox 360 consoles has struck hard.

In case you haven’t somehow heard already, 1,000,000 (you read that right—a million!) console bans have been issued since late October for violating Xbox Live’s terms of use agreement.  The majority of the bans were issued for having “flashed” disk drives that fool the console in to playing illegal copies of Xbox games.

Ban-waves have occurred in the past, but this time Microsoft has really made their message clear: if you have a modified console for playing pirated games over Xbox Live, you will be banned!

If you happen to be one of those filthy pirates who have fallen “victim” to the ban-wave, you’re probably feeling a little confused and a whole bunch depressed—especially with your entire friends list online playing Modern Warfare 2.  After all, an Xbox without Live is like a car without wheels, right?

Well, don’t worry.  You can still get online… sort of. 

A few options for getting a quick online fix—other than dishing out another $200 for a new Xbox—include tunneling software and programs used for network sharing.  Kai (http://www.teamxlink.co.uk) and XBConnect (http://xbconnect.com) both use software to fool your network in to thinking you have a LAN-party set up, enabling you to play many games that have an option for system link play.  Leaf Networks (http://leafnetworks.net) does pretty much the same thing but allows you a little more flexibility to play a wider variety of system link games that might not be on the list of the other two sites. 

Each of the programs supports voice chat, but other Xbox Live capabilities (e.g. Xbox friends list, party chat, Marketplace, Matchmaking, etc.) are obviously lost.  Each program is perfect for playing co-op games like Borderlands, L4D, ODST, and even MW2.  In multiplayer games, though, ping times can be high when trying to play against people that are too far away.  So having a group of friends in nearby states is definitely a plus. 

Each program has its pro’s and con’s, so the best advice is to try them all and see which one best fits your needs.

 
*Warning*

If in the market for a used Xbox 360 console, be really careful who you buy it from.  Make sure it can access Xbox Live before forking over any cash.  Craigslist and E bay are about to get really cluttered with banned units that can’t go online.