Configuring computers to use two different but similar networks

[thecoolnessrune]

Hey guys. I wanted to know about connecting two networks together. What I have is an apartment with its own inaccessible router. Our apartment has 3 network ports, all with speed caps. How it is thus far is:

Network Port 1: My laptop

Network Port 2: My brother?s laptop

Network Port 3: WRT54GS flashed to DD-WRT (but still running in basic AP routing mode)

The router is there to provide wireless internet to me and my brother when we don?t want to be stuck in the bedrooms. But the problem is that all the ports are speed capped, so we only want to use wireless as a last resort, not as the standard.
The thing that has come up now is that we want to access a network laser printer connected to the router. Also eventually there might be a file server there. So I?m asking the following:

What can we do to configure our network / computers to use the Ethernet for internet (and its network) while also using the wireless for its file network and the printer?

ADDITONALLY, when the wired Ethernet is disconnected, for it to fall back to using the router for the internet as well as all its other duties?

How would it be best to set up all this and configure it. If it makes any difference, the Operating Systems are Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit (Server is 2K3).

 

[JackMDS]

What the nature of the three ports is?

What the IP number of eqch is?

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
What the nature of the three ports is?

What the IP number of eqch is?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the nature of each port. I do know that they are dynamically assigned (My current IP address is 168.18.83.30). The Gateway is 168.18.83.1, the DHCP server is 168.18.216.100, the DNS servers are 192.72.72.11 and 131.144.4.10, and even a WINS server at 168.18.216.100.

I dont believe there's anything stopping me from assigning myself a port although I don't want to cause trouble to them by choosing an address in their DHCP range.

 

[JackMDS]

If the three ports provides private IP from the same Router then your computers are on the same Network.

As for the Wireless Router, you can connect it this way to one of the wall ports and wireless would be on the same Network.

Wireless Router as an Access Point - http://www.ezlan.net/router_AP.html

Or use only one port from the wall connect it to the Wirelles WAN port and connect all the wire and Wireless computers to your own Router.

Network Segregation - http://www.ezlan.net/shield.html

 

[thecoolnessrune]

The way it is now, the router acts as just that, a router. It creates a segregated area of network (going from 168 addresses to 192 addresses). This is good for us because we want to put the printer on there. And we're afraid if we open it up to the same IP, that some asshole in another apartment will spoof our printer with like 300 pages of crap. So if possible we wanted to keep it as a segregated network. We are trying to get our laptops to work with these two networks, by allowing it to use internet from the wall port and the printer on the router (which it would be linked to wirelessly while the printer is connected by ethernet). Also as I said we wanted to be able to switch to the router for internet when the ethernet cable is unplugged.

But we would like to keep two separate networks so that no one spoofs our printer.

 

[heymrdj]

Ok guys we got it, Vista surprisingly takes care of it for us. When in the wired network, if we turn on wireless it connects as Local Only, while wired is Local + Internet. If we disconnect wired, Wireless becomes Local + Internet. When wired is plugged back in, wired becomes Local + Internet again, while wireless returns to Local Only. This works perfectly as we can install the printer to a static IP of 192.168.0.5 and the system automatically sends the signal out via the local wireless connection to the network, while still using the hard wired connection for high speed for internet. When we move off the wired connection, wireless handles it all. Vista took care of everything automatically, we just set the wired/wireless interfaces TCP/IP V4 metrics so that wired took preference to wireless.