Bridging Networks

Hi,

We have a network set up as follows:
Satellite broadband connected to server connected to router connected to one PC, router also connects to a wirless access point which connects to a number of laptops. One in particular is connected by a cross over cable to another laptop. The broadband gateway is 192.168.0.1 and DHCP sets all the other IP addresses automatically. All machines are running XP (a mix of Pro and Home)

The problem comes when trying to bridge the wireless connection to the crossover connection. By themselves they both work fine - via wireless the first laptop can see the internet and other shares on the network, and via the crossover the 2nd laptop can see shares on the 1st laptop (but no intermet).

Basically I'm trying to get the internet onto the 2nd laptop.

I've tried switching ICS on on the 1st laptop on both connections - on the wireless connection if ICS is on it tries to take 192.168.0.1 which clashes with the network and doesn't work. If ICS is on the crossover connection then the 1st laptop can't get out to the internet.

Then I tried bridging the wireless and crossover connections - putting both laptop's on DHCP. However neither laptop is able to pickup its address from the DHCP server and so therefore can't reach the network.

Any thoughts on how to get the internet on the 2nd laptop over the crossover cable and still keeping the 1st laptop on the internet and still keeping file and printer sharing on both? All suggestions gratefully received.

Cheers,
Mark

host laptop nic and remote laptop nic need a different subnet then the rest are on. Then ICS will work. For example you are using 192.x.x.x for your lan. For these two nics you could use 172.16.x.x.

Cheers for that.

As you say the Lan is 192.168.0.x and the ethernet/crossover connection between the host laptop (10.0.0.1) and the remote laptop (10.0.0.2) does allow file and printer sharing between the two at the same time as the internet is working on the Host laptop - but still not joy with the internet on the remote laptoop.

If I switch ICS on on the Wireless connection to the Lan I get the 192.168.0.1 clash (it's the gateway for the Lan) and if I switch it on the ethernet/crossover connection the Host Laptop doesn't seem to be able to get on the net and neither does the Remote Laptop.

I'm hoping that maybe it's a bit of fine tuning I'm unaware of on the ethernet/crossover connection or the Internet connection options on one/both of the laptops - any pointers?

Cheers,
Mark

"If I switch ICS on on the Wireless connection to the Lan I get the 192.168.0.1 clash " What is the wireless cards ip address?

Are you using dhcp from the router to the wireless card? Either set dhcp on the router to EXCLUDE x.x.x.1 or manually set the wireless cards address to 192.168.0.2

You should not have a conflict then

The reason you can not get to the internet with this configuration is because the internet router needs a static route added to tell it how to get to the 10.0.0.0 network.

as wanderer2 was saying it is easier to just add ICS to the sharing host so that the 10.0.0.0 network gets NAT/PAT of the host pc's 192.168.0.x address and the router already knows how to get to that.

Indeed - I guess I knew this was the solution all along but I'd been shying away from it since I didn't set up the router - it was done by the satellite internet guys.

Thanks for the advice.

Cheers,
Mark