TechoLiO
A plethora of all things technical.

To get your laptop connected to the internet, you need a gateway. 802.11x type hubs are so cheap that they are an easy way to go. Plug in your cable/dsl ethernet into it, and then your main computer to it via ethernet, and away you go.

But originally to save money, I did it the alternate way. This article assumes some networking knowledge, so perhaps this isn't really news! But here it is anyway.

Ad-hoc Rock

Wireless adapters can connect via two modes. "infrastructure" mode, which is a typical hub you can buy, or ad-hoc. Ad-hoc means you can connect from one adapter to another directly, ip address to ip address.

But if you have a pc that's on all the time in your house, it can be a hub by adding a pci wi-fi card to it.

Share it

I won't go into great detail yet, maybe I'll expand this article if there is interest. What you do to make your always on PC a gateway to the internet is:

• Install the wi-fi card into your always on PC
• Go to the properties of your network places, and the properties for your ethernet adapter.
• Enable internet connection sharing in the "Advanced" tab by checking on "Allow other network users to connect...." and select your wireless card from the dropdown shown. Save these settings.
• Open a command box (not run) and type "ipconfig/all" and note what your ethernet card's ip address is, and what it says for DNS.
• Now it gets trickier. Go to the properties for your ethernet card and find tcp/ip in the little scroll area shown and double click that.
• Set up your own ip address, I will use 192.168.50.1 as an example, just select "use the following ip address" option and enter it it in, and leave the mask at 255.255.255.0 . In the DNS area, put in what you noted from the ipconfig command.

Now for each wireless computer you have, give it a .50 address that's unique. If it wants to know your gateway, put in 192.168.50.1, and for dns, the same number.

If you know what DHCP is and wonder how to do that, I'm not sure, because I don't like using that for my network, I like to know what assigments are every time.

Troubleshooting

Your wireless adapter software will help you see if the connection is good, then make sure you can ping from one computer to another. Often, the problem is that you forgot that you were running a firewall on either end! Make sure you open that up.

This is still a handy thing even though hubs for wi-fi are cheap. I still use the technique to bridge my hpna (phoneline network card) to the internet for my Audiotron player. And you could even use this on a dialup connection instead of a cable modem, just select the dialup connection instead of where I mention ethernet.