Share a Wireless Internet Connection?

C

cooter

Gawd
Joined
Dec 2, 2004
Messages
872
Hello,

I am in a bit of a dilemma. We just built a new shop and are trying to get wireless throughout the whole thing. However the situation is unique and I need some help.

The internet connection is actually a large area wireless connection. It is provided by DTN. Basically we have a dish type of thing on top the shop that picks up internet from a transmitter about 3 miles away. There is a large cable that goes from the dish into a Cisco 350 Wireless card in the computer.

ISP: http://www.speednet.com/residential.html

Wireless Card:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/wireless/ps4555/ps448/index.html

We are given a static IP address from the company which is in the 10.1.x.x range. What my original plan was to use ICS to share the DTN connection to a wireless router that is connected to the LAN port of the host computer. However ICS only works for the 192.168.0.1 ip address. We have to use the 10.1.x.x IP that we were given, that cannot be change. So because of this ICS does not seem like it will not work, unless there is a 3rd party tool that can used.

Also anytime that I enable the LAN port on the computer now that the router is plugged in, the internet drops off. it looks like the computer is defaulting to the LAN connection instead of teh DTN connection (which shows up as a wireless connection to XP). Is there anyway to stop this from happening?

Other notes:

Computer: It is a Core2Duo running windows XP Pro.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Also are there any routers that can be purchased that can use a wireless connection input for the LAN connection?

Thanks from a couple of farmers in NE.
 
Your ISP is giving you a private IP address as your "static" IP? Is your ISP run by a 17 year old out of his mom's house? That is the same as if they gave you 192.168.1.7 or similar as your static IP. That is also probably the reason ICS isn't working.

I have a few suggestions but none are perfect:

1. Call your ISP and bitch at them for being pathetic and get a real IP address from them.

2. Attempt to bridge your Wireless and LAN connections. You should then be able to plug the LAN port of your computer into the WAN port of the router, and use your 10.1 "static" IP as the WAN IP address on the router.

You'll still need an IP for the bridge interface on your computer though, but if you've only been assigned one "static" IP then you'll have to use that on the router WAN port instead. It should still bridge traffic even without an IP on the bridge interface but you won't have internet access on that computer unless you installed a 2nd LAN port and connected that 2nd LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the router.

3. Leave your setup as it is right now but use a proxy server to share internet access.

I've used this freeware in the past with good results:
http://www.analogx.com/contents/download/Network/proxy/Freeware.htm

It's not as simple as ICS in terms of sharing internet, but all you have to do is go into the browser settings of all the client computers and configure them to use the HTTP Proxy address of the server running the proxy server.

Also anytime that I enable the LAN port on the computer now that the router is plugged in, the internet drops off. it looks like the computer is defaulting to the LAN connection instead of teh DTN connection (which shows up as a wireless connection to XP). Is there anyway to stop this from happening?
Click to expand...

Hmmm been a while since I've been on XP to give you exact instructions on this but in the Network Control Panel, one of the menus up top you're looking for "advanced settings" I believe, where you can set the priority of your network connections. As long as it doesn't have your LAN port ahead of your wireless you should be good to go.
 
I have accomplished this before by running a win2k3 based Server running DHCP DNS and running a NAT on the wifi card. However this was just a temporary setup for a LanParty so that everyone on the LAN could use the hotel's wifi. I don't think most of your security minded people here will approve of a windows based NAT solution for a business and would prefer you use something linux based, but im quite sure its doable with a linux solution. Unfortunately im still a linux newbie and can't help you with that. I'm pretty sure however your best bet is a server setup to NAT your connection to your clients on the LAN.
 
NAT32 is a program that I used to use, which is similar to ICS but more advanced. It should be about as simple as telling it which interface has the internet connection and which interface to share to the LAN, but without the stupid forced configuration limitations of ICS.

If the incoming ISP connection is standard WiFi, you could configure a DD-WRT router to use that WiFi as its incoming "internet" connection, as well as sharing out WiFi to the LAN. You could also buy a WiFi client bridge (or configure another router as one) which would essentially convert the incoming WiFi to wired Ethernet, allowing you to plug in a standard router just as you would on a cable or DSL modem.

Keep in mind that you'll be double-NATing. Since your WAN connection is a private network as well, general internet traffic won't be hitting your 10.1.x.x address. Anything you set up on your LAN that would require port forwarding won't work unless the ISP also forwards those ports from their internet connection to your 10.1.x.x IP.
 
what i ended up doing was calling up DTN and they walked me through setting up ICS (which i had already tried), they were unsuccessful with that. They then sent out someone to install a box to convert the satelite cable to ethernet. now we are running through the router first, then computer. in the past they never had a box that could do this so i was happy to change over.

Thanks for the replies.
 
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