Wireless/Ethernet Coexistence and Sharing Question

[imhotepmp]

At school we currently have 2 Desktops(Win2k) configured via dhcp connected to a hub thats on the university network. My question is this. Is there any way to share this connection to a laptop with a wireless card/gateway? Also, sorry if any of the following sounds ridiculous, I have no idea how all this wireless stuff works. This is what Im thinking:

Option 1:Get wireless router/gateway and connect to hub via cat5. The router/gateway could then be configured via dhcp like the desktops. Get pcmia wireless card, and wah-la! we have a connection.

Option 2:I would rather not pay for a router($100+), so would it be possible to share a connection between two wireless cards, sort of a crossover cable for wireless?

Are these viable options? Thanks for the input.

marquis

 

[IaPuP]

Well, if your university will let you take ANOTHER Ip address (for the router) then you can sure jack it in and make it work that way.

THe cards can also work in "Ad hoc" mode where they need no access point. While in some cases it reduces the interference resitance over distance and sometimes also the transfer rate, it should work just as well as the access point for what you're doing if you don't mind putting the laptop behind a NAT. Just use Microsoft's Internet Connection Sharing on your desktop to bridge the connection to the wireless. Then you can set up DHCP on the wireless to snag and internal address.

If you're feeling ambitious, you could try to do a 'true' bridge of the segments and get your laptop and external address tho that can be tricky.

Eric