Networking Madness!

[sonnytiger]

So here is my story, I have my main machine whitch has a wifi card and the standard built-in gigabit ethernet. I get my internet connection from the wifi card. I have another computer with just built in Ethernet as well, My main machine is running windows 7 x64 and the other computer is running XP x86 I want to be able to connect my main machine to my ethernet switch and the other computer to the ethernet switch and be able to get internet on the spare computer.

Now here are the issues:

1. How do i set up the spare computer to get the internet connection from my main machine?

2. Whenever i connect the ethernet cable to my main machine all my programs (firefox, pidgin, steam, ect) try and connect to the internet through the ethernet connection, but there isn't a internet connection present there only throught the wifi card. How do i fix this so that even if i plug my ethernet cabe lin it will still try and connect to the internet through the wifi card?

3. I also go to my fathers on the weekend and i get my intrenet through ethernet there so i need to be able to switch back and forth preferably automatically.

 

[Frick]

If I got this right, you want your setup to look like:

teh Webz -> "WLAN" (is there a router/switch present??) -> Main system through WLAN -> Secondary system through wired from the main system.

Because that's just bad planning. Why not connect the secondary system to a router?

 

[newtekie1]

Go into your Wireless Adapter's properties, there should be a "sharing" tab.

Enable sharing, select the ethernet connection in the drop down box.

Plug the cables from each computer into the switch.

Enjoy the internet on the second machine.

 

[sonnytiger]

heres a diagram to mt predicament, I want to accomplish two things:

1) connect to the internet with the spare computer
2) Make my main machine stop trying to connect to the internet through my wired connection

 

[sonnytiger]

 

[andrew123]

On the spare machine you will need to give it an ip address, say 192.168.0.2/24, give it the default gateway address of 192.168.0.1, set up your spare maching to get it's DNS information from the DNS server your ISP provides you, then cable the spare machines ethernet into the switch, cable the switch into your main pc's gigabit port, assign that interface ip address 192.168.0.1/24. Your WiFi interface will have an address provided to it from either your ISP or internally through a soho/router, assuming your WiFi has ip address 192.168.1.2 you will need to install some sort of RIP routing (or I think on windows it's called internet connection sharing) to map all traffic destined from the 192.168.0.0 network to 192.168.1.0 network.

This if course means that all your traffic, for your main PC and your spare PC are going to have to go through WiFi, which isn't exactly the most elegant solution. Sorry I couldn't provide you more information on how to configure your main machine to route traffic but the problem is that I'm not a windows user and I really don't know what software would work for such a purpose.

Good luck

 

[andrew123]

Here is a bit more information, apparently use the route command... start command prompt..

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2008/...ting-and-remote-access-console-or-dos-prompt/

And this one for IP Forwarding (enables routing)..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315236

and finally an article describing exactly what you want...

http://www.home-network-help.com/ip-forwarding.html

 

[ron732]

Sonnytiger what you want to do is internet connection sharing (ICS). Take a look at how Microsoft explains it.

Using ICS (Internet Connection Sharing)

 

[sonnytiger]

Thanks guys, that was tons of help.

 

[Hybrid_theory]

Personally, id recommend buying a usb wireless or pci card. They cost $30-$50, and will be much more reliable than ICS, or so I hear.