Noob Networking Question

[smorrow27]

Hey all. I've got a desktop in my room which is part of the home wireless network and a pile of old scraps sitting next to it that will hopefully be my new Folding@home machine (taped to a piece of cardboard, no less.) One thing I don't have is an extra wireless card. The router is downstairs and hooked up to cable TV so immobile. Don't want the scraps in my living room so an ethernet connection is out. My plan was to connect the scraps to my desktop by ethernet cable and them somehow indirectly to the internet through my desktop. I feel this should be possible, but don't know exactly how. I know there are probably easier answers (like shelling out $15 for a cheap wireless card) but once I set my mind to something it simply must be done. Networking is definately NOT my strongsuit, but this is how we learn, right? Thanks in advance for the suggestions.

 

[Kibbo86]

Yep, it is possible.

Just make sure you have a NIC (Ethernet port) in the wireless box, and one in the soon-to-be box. Which OSs will you have running on these two comps?

 

[JackMDS]

Welcome to AT Network Forum.

You need to buy an extra NIC for your computer and connect it to the Scrap.

If the Scrap does not have an NIC, then you have to buy a second NIC.

Two NICs would cost you like one Wireless, and you would lose money on electricity, cause Scrap would have Internet only if Desktop is On.

Otherwise, if you would like to pursue your original plan and you are using Win XP on the desktop you can Bridge the two computers and it should work

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/wxpbrdge.html

:sun:

 

[smorrow27]

Yeah, both "boxes" have NIC's on the respective motherboards, hence my planned approach. One new snaffu is that Windows XP is not going to work out on the pile of scraps (couldn't switch over an OEM license) so it's going to have to be Win98, unless I want to open up the whole Linux can of worms (no experience at all.) Tried the network bridge already with limited success. Not sure if that's possible in Win98, but I'll try. Is there a difference between bridging the two networks (scrap to Desktop bridged to the rest of my home LAN) and then actually connecting the scrap all the way through to Stanford and the internet? Do I have to deal with some internet sharing thing? Couldn't actually get the scraps all the way to the internet even though my desktop was indicating everything was connected and bridged properly. And once again, price isn't really the issue here, and I probably will end up buying a wireless card just so simplify things, but I just want to know how and if this is possible. Thanks for the advice.

 

[Kibbo86]

Check out these links:

Internet Connection Sharing

Presentation on ICS with specific mention of Win 98SE

From what I gleaned from the above, you need to turn on ICS on the host computer, and then the client will just treat it like a router, though I just skimmed the articles.

Edit: on further reading, your host computer will take for itself the IP address 192.168.0.1, so you may need to tweak the router's DHCP settings. At the very least, make sure any other computers are not on when this happens, so that they aren't hogging the address. You may have to assign static IPAs to all the computers on the network, I don't know what your router firmware will support.