Share Wifi w/ Gigabit Switch

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travm

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will this work?

I have very slow internet, so I want to network my PC's together on a wired LAN thru an unmanged switch, and then use a wifi adapter in 1 pc to bridge that connection through the swtich. Is this possible?
Objective being my home network works more reliably and faster (file transfer mainly), while maintaining a stable low latency connection to the internet. My internet is through a company where I have a DSL Modem/Router/Voip device that i cannot twiddle settings on,l
 
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Why would you want to do it this way--you should simply wire them directly to the switch and then to the dsl router.
 
SamirD said:
Why would you want to do it this way--you should simply wire them directly to the switch and then to the dsl router.
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Because that isn't practical. Dsl router is 3 floors away
Also I've tried AC wireless and it was not satisfactory for file transfers.
 
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It's possible, but likely using a separate wifi access point which is connected also via one of those hard wires.
 
scrappymouse said:
what was your file transfer speed? what speed are you looking to get?
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It was slow. Don't recall the exact numbers. Currently when I need to transfer files I disconnect from the wifi and connect two PC's together with an old router. Using gigabit wires is the best solution.
The PC's are so far from the router and comparitively close together, so wifi doesn't hit even rated thoroughput.
 
Wired is the best regardless. If you can't wire ethernet all the way to your router, then you should explore MoCA adapters (uses Coax aka Cable-TV/Satellite cable that may already be installed in your home).

If you really want to use WiFi, I would get an actual WiFi bridge instead of using a computer. A WiFi bridge is a self-contained WiFi client device that will connect to your WiFi network and then have an Ethernet port that you can plug into your switch. That way your network connectivity isn't dependent on ghetto software bridge settings on one of your PCs.
 
GotNoRice said:
Wired is the best regardless. If you can't wire ethernet all the way to your router, then you should explore MoCA adapters (uses Coax aka Cable-TV/Satellite cable that may already be installed in your home).
Click to expand...

To be clear, MoCA is only compatible with cable-TV or dark coax. It cannot be used over the same coax as satellite-TV (the signal frequencies used conflict).

Powerline networking is another possible option, but generally ranks behind MoCA. Still probably better than trying to get WiFi to work well across multiple floors.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
To be clear, MoCA is only compatible with cable-TV or dark coax. It cannot be used over the same coax as satellite-TV (the signal frequencies used conflict).

Powerline networking is another possible option, but generally ranks behind MoCA. Still probably better than trying to get WiFi to work well across multiple floors.
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The wifi internet is fine, all 5mbps. It's moving 100s of GB from one of to another less than 2 ft from each other that is the problem.
 
travm said:
The wifi internet is fine, all 5mbps. It's moving 100s of GB from one of to another less than 2 ft from each other that is the problem.
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I take it the problem is that neither of your computers is wired to the internet router?

If BOTH computers are using WiFi AND BOTH computers are running any version of Windows 8 or newer: Just connect the dumb switch between them, and set a manual 192.168.x.x IP on each WIRED adapter in Windows. MAKE SURE THE WIRED CONNECTION IS A DIFFERENT SUBNET FROM YOUR INTERNET/WIFI IP RANGE. Set each computer's DNS/Gateway to the IP of the opposite WIRED computer. Windows will automatically use the faster Ethernet connection for data transfers between the two computers and connect to the WiFi for Internet.

I've done this for a 10G Ethernet connection between my workstation and desktop PC (well, without the WiFi - each computer had a 1G onboard NIC and a 10G PCIe NIC, and the Internet for each machine was over the slower 1G ethernet). I was moving files across between each machine at ~500 MB/s as opposed to the ~100 with just the 1G.

Edit: File transfers were between NVMe SSD on my workstation (System 1 in my sig) and 8x8TB hardware RAID 6 on my file server (a Dell R515 that was rescued from being dumped by a local business doing upgrades, sans drives of course)
 
Could I take this a step further and use a crossover cable to connect the two PC's together? I haven't thought about doing that in twenty years...
 
travm said:
Could I take this a step further and use a crossover cable to connect the two PC's together? I haven't thought about doing that in twenty
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Most modern NICs don't even require a crossover - you just plug in a regular Ethernet cable and it just works. My 10G cards were connected directly card-to-card that way.
 
mvmiller12 said:
Most modern NICs don't even require a crossover - you just plug in a regular Ethernet cable and it just works. My 10G cards were connected directly card-to-card that way.
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Trying this now, what do i set the IP's to?
windows isnt letting me transfer files, not convinced its an ip issue, because i've run into this before.
 
travm said:
Trying this now, what do i set the IP's to?
windows isnt letting me transfer files, not convinced its an ip issue, because i've run into this before.
Click to expand...
Try this...

Card 1: IP Address of 192.168.3.1, DNS of 192.168.3.2, Gateway of 192.168.3.2

Card 2: IP Address of 192.168.3.2, DNS of 192.168.3.1, Gateway of 192.168.3.1

You should have link lights between the two cards regardless.
 
If both machines have a free PCIe slot, grab a pair of 2.5Gbe cards, they are like $30 each.
This is the one I bought,
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07Y2GWVB8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My new motherboard has 1Gbe and 2.5Gbe ports so I added a 2.5Gbe card to my Plex server so I can copy files back and forth as fast as my drives can go.
The 1Gbe ports are used for internet access.
I too was having issues setting it up and getting it to work right but the guys here helped me out with the correct IP settings.
I used the settings like mvmiller12 posted but I left the DNS section blank.
2.5Gbe-copy.jpg
 
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mvmiller12 said:
Try this...

Card 1: IP Address of 192.168.3.1, DNS of 192.168.3.2, Gateway of 192.168.3.2

Card 2: IP Address of 192.168.3.2, DNS of 192.168.3.1, Gateway of 192.168.3.1

You should have link lights between the two cards regardless.
Click to expand...
Ignore everything said above about gateway and dns. You do not need and should not specify a gateway to communicate with an IP and the same subnet. Set the second NIC in each machine to an IP on a different subnet than you are using for your DHCP addresses. Meaning if the rest of your network is 192.168.1.x with a mask of 255.255.255.0 then use 192.168.Y.x where Y is a number that between 2 and 255. Use the same mask of 255.255.255.0.
 
Nicklebon said:
Ignore everything said above about gateway and dns. You do not need and should not specify a gateway to communicate with an IP and the same subnet. Set the second NIC in each machine to an IP on a different subnet than you are using for your DHCP addresses. Meaning if the rest of your network is 192.168.1.x with a mask of 255.255.255.0 then use 192.168.Y.x where Y is a number that between 2 and 255. Use the same mask of 255.255.255.0.
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Yeah that's what I did and it didn't work. I think it was a permissions issue though and not hardware problem. I managed to get it to work using an old router bit only after I tweaked The permissions for sharing. I seem to recall old windows being more intuitive. Like if I want to share a folder on my private network why not automatically set the read write permissions. Or do some people just want to be able to see folders exist...
 
Nicklebon said:
Ignore everything said above about gateway and dns. You do not need and should not specify a gateway to communicate with an IP and the same subnet. Set the second NIC in each machine to an IP on a different subnet than you are using for your DHCP addresses. Meaning if the rest of your network is 192.168.1.x with a mask of 255.255.255.0 then use 192.168.Y.x where Y is a number that between 2 and 255. Use the same mask of 255.255.255.0.
Click to expand...
For it to work on my setup I had to put the other machine as the Gateway and vice versa.
 
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