i made a stupid desicion now i want to try again

[Orincarnia]

(if you want to see the question, scroll down to the bottom)

one day i was ready to get a wireless desktop card and begin trying to wirelessly connect my laptop and desktop, but i got paranoid and cynical and asked the tech guys at best buy and they said "nope this is only a reciever" and none of them explained ad-hoc networking to me, i don't even thing they knew what i was talkign about, they must have thought it was a brand...............well i ended up getting discouraged and since then i've seen that its perfectly possible and i want to go back and try again

i ended up walking out with no card my head hanging, all my friends were already out, (i haden't planned anything for us so they went separate ways) and i was expecting to spend the rest of the evening installig and using the card, but then i walked out with no card since they were saying it wouldn't work without a router,

i ended up calling daniel then tryed to go to a movie, but scary movie 3 was sold out, so we went to blockbuster and since i felt so bad i decided to get the one movie i've wanted for a long time stargate, but then he wanted 20 bucks which he promised to pay back, but i knew he wouldn't, and we rented 2 fast 2 furious, so i lost that night hands down cause daniels parents wouldn't even let him finish the movie at my house, they wanted him home immediatly, i've seen 2f2f too many times so it wasn't worth it for me to finish it, so i had spent all my money and all i got was a movie, was it worth it? no, now i'm trying to use ethernet, and its not working,

now that i've complained about everything: my question

should i buy the desktop wireless card?

[cliekb]

I would buy a multi-port/wireless router combo instead, for about the same money. It gives your desktop the connection, as well as the wireless for your laptop and other devices...
cliekb

[Orincarnia]

50 bucks? cause thats what best buy is charging...........

[dannn]

there are lots of packages that come with wireless router and a wireless card for the notebook or the desktop. ive seen them around for about 100 bucks

[Orincarnia]

well actually my parents are condemning a wireless router cause they think we're gonna get hacked, i know the WEP and all that stuff, but they don't believe me, they think everyone is out to get us, so what i want to do is bridge the ethernet going into my desktop with the wireless card then my laptop pulls the internet form the wireless card through to the ethernet and then i can be anywhere in the house that i want, but my parents would NEVER allow a wireless router, even though they could keep 400 bucks in their pcoket by not attempting to put the wires in the wall, and just use wireless........they're paranoid i guess

[binaryDigit]

Originally posted by Orincarnia
well actually my parents are condemning a wireless router cause they think we're gonna get hacked, i know the WEP and all that stuff, but they don't believe me, they think everyone is out to get us, so what i want to do is bridge the ethernet going into my desktop with the wireless card then my laptop pulls the internet form the wireless card through to the ethernet and then i can be anywhere in the house that i want, but my parents would NEVER allow a wireless router, even though they could keep 400 bucks in their pcoket by not attempting to put the wires in the wall, and just use wireless........they're paranoid i guess

Remember, just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they're not after you. ;)

Assuming your parents are allowing ANY wireless equipment, just get the AP and don't worry about messing with having your laptop go through your PC. You don't gain anything since an AP will cost about the same as the wifi nic for your pc. Also, if your wifi nic is in some sort of bridge mode, then all traffic the computer receives on it's wired nic is likely to be broadcast out the wifi nic, potentially enhancing a would be hackers ability to store up encrypted packets depending on the rest of your network topology.

Oh, and woe be upon you if someone DOES hack into your little wireless setup and gains access to your parents computer. You may consider partitioning your network into two and placing your internal (i.e. non wireless) network behind a firewall.

[Orincarnia]

ok, if only you could give me everything you know, that is exactly what i want to do

*edit right here - my parents won't allow an AP but they will buy a network card for my comp, i'm not paying for it, so the cost is on them........if my parents did allow an AP, and they know what it looks like cause its a router with "rabbit ears" as my parents say, and they won't allow one hooked up to their network

ok i've got the card in and its installed and evreything, and i also have my laptop doing the same, but one bad thing, my desktop sees a network called "MSHOME" but my laptop doesn't..........i need to know if its my laptop giving that network signal to the desktop and just not realizing it, or if someones got a wireless connection goin on and my laptops not powerful enough to intercept it

and yes the wireless card is bridged to the ethernet card, i intended to fake a wireless AP by broadcasting internet from my dekstop and it being the only thing available that it would see it.........but it doesn't, well it does see the hp wireless thingy up the street, but i have no signal so its way out there.

i want to be able to share the internet connection from my desktop to laptop so i can be in the living room all comfy and i just got the definitions for the RMC to support the cable box, so now i can control the whole system (smiles like a small child at christmas) :D

ok in conclusion...........i'm trying to run a wire from the hard wire router through to my desktop and to the wireless card and my laptop just sees my desktop as part of the cord that runs to the router, so a conversion from wireless to ethernet and then out the router to the internet where i want to be

can you explain in detail?

[Orincarnia]

aww c'mon they're not even 2 feet away from eachother and they can't even see eachother.............

ok when i click on MSHOME, the configure button stays greyed and acts as if i don't have a network in there

[Orincarnia]

hold up let me RTFM and then maybe i'll be able to communicate better after the manual has informed me

[Pdasrock]

I set up my wlan a while ago, it was a pain in the butt...then again I'm sitting at my laptop with NO CORDS ATTACHED typing this, so what can ya do:D.
As far as advice goes, make sure you have all the drivers installed, and carefully remember any passwords you assign, and you want to find your routers address as well, like http://192.168.2.2 or whatever.

[Orincarnia]

ok if i had a router i wouldn't be having all this crap happening to me, i set up my house ethernet perfectly and easily, but, my parents don't want me to do a wireless internet connection (as i have stated previously) (hey i sounded pretty smart in that last sentence) well i ain't got a router, all i have is 2 NIC's and 2 blind comptuers that they're in, its called ad-hoc networking and i'm doing this for COSC 1 compuer experiment, my freinds say i can't do it, but i say i can, i want to prove them wrong, the people at best buy though ad-hoc was sold by starbucks.............i think i need to take their place in the wireless department

[Orincarnia]

i do this at school all the time my mom just picked me up from school though so, yeah i did this whole big thing about me finally being wireless i told all my friends and family, but the bad part was, i had to be at school, now i want to make my desktop an ethernet to wireless converter. i've heard of those direct ehternet to wireless converters but i've already got this card and i want to say i made it work

[binaryDigit]

Sorry, I've never done the adhoc thing, so I can't really give you any direct help there. But we can take a stab at your networking woes. When you say that they "can't talk to each other", do you mean that you can't get windows networking working between them? Is your laptop receiving an ip address from dhcp (assuming you're using DHCP). If not, if you hardcode the ip, can you ping any of the other boxes (the router or your pc)? If the end goal is for you to "surf" from your laptop, having your laptop ping your internet router is what you're looking to try to achieve. Don't worry about getting the windows networking stuff working.

Oh, and which version of windows are you running on your desktop? I don't know if all versions (i.e. non "server" versions) will route/bridge ip traffic.

[Orincarnia]

ok, lets start with the basics

whats a DHCP?

my laptop is identical to my desktop except for the physical components and the processor (300 mhz difference)
both xp, but i've heard of ICS and i dont know what that is but people say you dont need to make a network bridge in xp because of the ICS

and how do i ping an IP address?

the router is and ethernet only router (and my parents swear they'll keep it that way) and my laptop does not recognize that the pc has a wireless card which will be its connection to the internet

[Pdasrock]

Ohh, my bad, I didn't understand you properly. In that case have you tried My computer/control panel/networking and tried setting it up that way? There is an option to connect to the internet through another computer.

[Orincarnia]

sure but this computer needs to be the one to supply the internet, and when i do that it doesn't list the wireless card as one of the availabe utilities to connect to the internet

[tprime76]

This CAN be done. I might take a little work, but bridging networks is not all that horrible.

Here we go... What OS is your desktop? If it is a non-server OS, you need a registry change to get the traffic routed. If it IS a server OS, you need to turn of IP Forwarding.

The wireline connection to your router can stay DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) provided you can connect to the internet from your desktop OK. Lets just say, for arguement's sake, that your Desktop's wireline IP address is 192.168.1.101.

For your wireless connection, you will use ad-hoc networking on BOTH your desktop and laptop. For your WIRELESS connection, you will need to specify a different IP address subnet. Let's make it 192.168.2.101. For your laptop, hardcode the IP address as 192.168.1.105, with a Gateway of 192.168.2.101. You will use the SAME DNS SETTINGS AS THE DESKTOP'S WIRELINE CONNECTION TO THE ROUTER. For all of these examples use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, just to keep it easy.

DESKTOP WIRELINE TO ROUTER (via DHCP) Plug in your ISPs DNS settings where I have given examples
IP: 192.168.1.101
GW: 192.168.1.1 (Broadband router or Modem via DHCP)
SM: 255.255.255.0
DNS1: 206.x.x.x (example via DHCP)
DNS2: 206.y.y.y (example via DHCP)

DESKTOP WIRELESS IN AD-HOC MODE
IP: 192.168.2.101 (Hardcoded)
GW: unspecified
SM: 255.255.255.0

LAPTOP WIRELESS IN AD-HOC MODE
IP: 192.168.2.105 (Hardcoded)
GW: 192.168.2.101 (Hardcoded)
SM: 255.255.255.0
DNS1: 206.x.x.x (Hardcoded to be the same as wireline desktop)
DNS2: 206.y.y.y (Hardcoded to be the same as wireline desktop)

This should work IF YOUR DESKTOP IS A SERVER OS. Let me know if it is windows 2000 or XP. Alternatively, you can set up internet connection sharing.

Couple suggestions if you have already done these steps.
1. Turn off WEP while you configure this. Turn it back on after it works
2. Don't talk on cordless phones while you configure wireless, 2.4 ghz wireless phones can conflict with wireless.

Good luck

[Orincarnia]

ok
both os's are xp home

how do i turn off IP forwarding?

[Orincarnia]

i can't believe this, i can't find what i need to to edit the ip stuff, i can display it just fine, but i can't get to where i can specify........
i know it exists i was just there yesterday..........

[Orincarnia]

YES FOUND IT

[Orincarnia]

ok i followed your instructions and everything worked out fine except the places where i needed the original ip address,

once i put in what i thought to be my ip address, it wouldn't let me connect to the interent until i set it to "obtian an ip address automatically"

[tprime76]

I am assuming you have 2 NICs (network interface card) in your desktop PC. A wireline card and a wireless card, right? For your wireline card, you didn't need to change the IP addresses for it. You should let your router assign it an IP address; I was just using that IP address for an example. However, the IP addresses for the 2 wireless NICs (desktop and laptop) should be hardcoded. Check out this link for turning on IP routing on XP.

http://www.wown.com/j_helmig/wxpbrdge.htm

Do you have Yahoo Instant Messenger? If so, it would be easier for me to help you via IM instead of forums. You could also let me know what your IP addresses are without posting them on the web. I would be able to tell you EXACTLY what IP addresses need to go where.

[Orincarnia]

ok i'm bryan1571 on yahoo

[Orincarnia]

this is insane, ok my mom finally bought me a wireless router, but i have to keep it on my end of the connection, basically i have a router going to wireless router and then into my pcs, is this possible? if it is what do i have to do to make it work?

[Orincarnia]

well it all works now, i'll connect to my desktop through as-hoc but i'll use the wlan for this now, but any time anyone else wants to do ad-hoc networking i'll keep your post in mind

[tprime76]

Don't tell your mom, but her solution is just as insecure as connecting the main line into your wireless router. Either way, I think you will be much happier having a router. It makes things much easier.

It is no wonder you have 1200+ posts. You post 3 times for every major post. :-)


Have fun.

[Orincarnia]

well i told her before you told me, so she let me hook it up and now we have a full wireless network i found out you can't hook one router up to another and expect internet, well i'm in the living room now, and i'm eating a pumpkin role, mmmmm good pumpkin role