arch13

I'm trying to connect a desktop to an internet connection my neighbor has been nice enough to let me ride on wirelessly in my new apt.

The parts of this algerbra equation are as follows:
- One Hp Nx7010 with a wired 10/100 NIC and an intel Wireless A/B/G card w/ Win XP Pro
- 1 NetGear MR814n router
- 2 lengths of Cat5 (not cross-over)
- 1 Win2k Pro Desktop with a Netgear 10/100 NIC

So the goal is to bridge the wireless connection the laptop is receiving to the desktop somehow. I tried creating a bridge in the control panel on the laptop and lost the wireless connection. The setup I tried was laptop nic to lan port 1 of the router, and the desktop on Lan port 2.
Plugging in the laptop to the router wan port will not work without crossover cable as I understand it.
Using ICS on the wireless connection doesn't work since the neighbors router occupies the needed Ip Address.

What solutions would you suggest TFP'ers? I'm getting acheing eyes googling answers all afternoon.

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MikeSty

Wait, how is the desktop supposed to receive the wireless signal?

Edit: OOH, I get it now. His router is sending wirelessly to your laptop, which you want to hardwire to your desktop.

EDIT 2: And then through your own wired router? Yeah, you need to put the signal through WAN.

arch13

I just want to bridge the connection through the laptop to the desktop.
The laptop receives the signal from his router. I want to patch that signal through to the desktop.
The peices I have to work with are listed above.

Every time I try to create a network bridge between the wireless NIC and wired NIC on the laptop, XP bridges the connection, but then the wireless connecton has an X through it.
I don't have a crossover cable, so I can't feed a straight connection between the two. Plugging my laptops nic into my routers WAN port would need a crossover cable, wouldn't it?
I can turn of DHCP on my router, and/or change the assigned IP ranges of the connected machines and router so my router does not occupy IP's that my neighbors router has assigned.

So how can I use the laptop to make a network bridge to feed connectivity to the desktop?

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MikeSty

Why do you need the router in the first place? If the NIC's are new enough on the lappy and the desktop, you might be able to use a straight cable.

Clearly the bridge is having some sort of issues. This is where my advice stops

shazbotus

Would it be cost prohibitive to just buy a wireless PCI card for your desktop?

oiekeooiyw

Here's my suggestion. Pick up a Wireless Ethernet Bridge (like a WET11 from Linksys) that will pick up the wireless signal from your neighbor, then pick up a cheap switch that will deliver the connection to your desktop and laptop. $100 us will get you what you need.

MikeSty

Or.... just .... get a WUSB and plug it into the desktop?

arch13

Well I could just buy a PCI or USB card,, but what do I learn from that
Besides,money is tight righ now. Yes, even for a 15.00 WUSB.

So since my last post I have tried a few things.
I created a bridge between the two connections on the laptop, then used "netsh bridge show adapter" to look at the NICS in the bridge. I set the wireless NIC to forcecompatmode eneabled. I turned off dchp on the router and changed the router ip to the upper 100's to avoid any problems. That in theory would make the router behave as a hub without anything plugged into the wan port and two computers on lan ports. All of this should have worked.

What I'm realizing is that my problem is farther up the chain. When I create the bridge, the wireless connection remains connected to the neighbors router according to my network connection panel, but the bridge does not get assigned an IP by the router, nor does the bridge inherit the wireless connections IP.
Further, internet connectivity is lost completeley. Even with the wired laptop nic unplugged, the wireless connection has no access when a bridge is created even though the network panel shows it as connected.
I've tried setting the wireless NIC to forcecomptmode enabled and disabled, but neither regains connectivity as long as the bridge exist that it is a part of.

Does anyone have any suggestions?


Edit:

Okay, I'm going to clarify here.

What I have done is the following. I created a bridge in XP on the laptop by selecting the wired NIC and the Wireless NIC in the connection panel. I right click and create a bridge out of these two highlighted connections.
Then I jump to a comand promt and enable forced campatability mode on both nics in the bridge as per this microsoft tutorial. This forces the NICS to analyze all packets regardless of orgin, thus allowing the bridge to function.
I disable dchp on my router and change the routers IP to a 192.x.x.x.100 number. By doing this, i have made the router nothing more than a standard fare hub with two computers plugged in.

The desktop should now see the laptop, and they do see each other via the hub. Both can be found in my network places on either machine.

I cannot even know at this point if the desktop could use the laptops WAN connection via the bridge however.

That is becuase the laptop can no longer access the internet once the bridge is created.
Before I turned on compatability mode, the wireless connection would be lost when the bridge was created. Once I enabled compatability on the NIC's as per the MS tutorial, both connections show as connected in the bridge. However, opening a firefox window quickly reveals that i can no longer access the internet via the wireless connection. It appears connected according to windows, but will not access the internet.

Gosh I hope someone has read this far and can help.
I'll point out that a big part of this is learning about how to do such things.

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MikeSty

I really wish I could help more, or do stuff to learn to help more - but I'm afraid I don't have the equipment to begin experimenting with this atm :-/

juan99

IF you know linux and are able to get your wireless adapter working you can turn your laptop into a router. It's a lot simpler then it sounds. Your laptop will still be on the web and your desktop will have access also. I did it with RedHat Fedora core 3. But if you don't know linux it could be a little much. Let me know if this an option and I'll post a solution to your problem.

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Pragma

Does Internet Connection Sharing work on the laptop's wireless interface (sorry for not reading the whole thread - I'm in a bit of a rush this morning). If you can do ICS on that interface, that should be all that's needed, and it'll start running a DHCP server on the other interface (the one connecting to the desktop) and the desktop should get an IP address and be able to connect to the internet.

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arch13

Nope. Becuase my neighbors wireless router that I receive my internet connection from uses the 192.x.x.x.01 address, ICS will not function as it needs that address to be the gateway.
I tried to use ICS and was told that I cannot as the IP is already is use on the network.
Hence me trying to simply bridge the connections.

I can create the bridge, but once I do the wireless connection will not access the internet, and seems to lose it's connection out even though it indicates that it is still connected to the neighbors router.
Using IP config tells me that the bridge is being assigned a 168.x.x.x.x IP which indicates that it could not get an IP fronm the router and was assigned an internal IP from Windows.

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"The wheel is turning but the hamsters dead"
____________________________
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cyrnel

Make sure any firewalls aren't affecting either interface.

Are you using XP to manage the laptop's wireless connection? As ugly as it is you may need to.

Also, make sure the other interface is in promiscuous mode:

"netsh bridge show a" to get your adapters (n).

If any show as disabled or unknown then:

"netsh bridge set a (n) e" But you know that.

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