Be Excellent To Each Other

Should be pretty simple. I'm wireless atm. So my only computer in the house is upstairs and the router is downstairs. However, soon I am going to have another one right next to it and I would like to share the connection.

I have two NIC cards and I have a cross over cable, so I would rather not spend £13 or so on a PCI WLAN card unless I have to. I do remember trying to share my connection before and failed horribly. the PC with the wireless uses Vista and the one I would like to share it to uses XP. Does any one know how to do this?

I am 99% sure that I've a spare router that you can have and use it as a relay and wire both into that, I you so want. I can't really check until Sunday, though as I've an exam tomorrow, and going up into the loft post exam beers isn't a great idea as it involves a ladder at the top of the stairs...

Or, I've got a USB wireless dingle thingy. I think. That might help.

google ics. Internet connection sharing. In vista, it's usally right click share. You'll need a static ip on the second pc

c

IME this can be a complete pain in the arse to keep working, and it will require both PCs to be on if you want to use the second one. The router as repeater option mentioned might be more satisfactory.

Or drop a cable through the ceiling, which is better yet.

I forgot all about this thread. Mal, that's very generous of you but when I thought about the headaches and realised how cheap wireless cards are I just got another one.

I was going to buy another one like I have as it was only £12 on Amazon. But I found a brand new boxed Linksys (Cisco) dual band for £10 del on Ebay. When I ran the model number on shopping it's a £70 card.

So problem solved. I have slapped that in here (using it now) and will use my other one in the silver AW

I would love to know what a £70 wireless card does. I assume it makes great macaroni cheese.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say £70. I meant £91.08.

http://froogle.ibitstore.com/index.php? ... ore.com%2F

Utterly ridiculous of course.. It's Dell selling them for £70 refurb. They're old cards, 2005ish from the look of it. I think it's the fact that they're switchable throughout the bands that made them expensive new.

It's also one of the supported cards for Aircrack.

All of these are expensive which shows how many people don't pay for their connection.

You sure? Most of the cards that work properly in Linux work fine with Aircrack.

You need special drivers to go in to broadcast mode. They have a fully compatible list on the site and all of these cards have a higher premium than those not on the list.

There are of course other cards that will work but this can be a gamble as you have to get the right chip set and often these are changed in card revisions.

That was my understanding of it anyway.

Ah, I assumed the same cards that worked in Linux would work in Windaes, but apparently not.


Top tip for wireless crackers then; dual-boot with Linux, you cheap bastards

haha is that so?

I see... lol

And another resurrection from me tonight! I'm struggling with home network speeds and though I'd run it by the hive mind.

So, to boil my network topology down to the bits I'm actually concerned with here we've got:

• ISP router in living room
• Desktop PC homeplugged to router
• Laptop wi-fi'd to router

The file transfer speeds around the flat have always been fuck awful. We struggled to stream SD video around the place and HD video is an absolute no-go. At least this was the case the last time we tried as we've long since given up and just used USB drives to watch stuff in different rooms. When doing a recent network file copy from the laptop to the desktop though I noticed that copy speed was an all-time-low of 800KBps a second which is fucking shocking by any measure which spurred me to at least have a poke around.

So, I did some experimenting tonight to try and work out the source of the issue but I'm not really much further forward.

Test 1: two laptops (I borrowed my mum's) wired directly to the router. File copy speed between them: about 11MBps
Test 2: one laptop wired directly to the router and desktop homeplugged in. File copy speed between them: about 7MBps
Test 3: one laptop wired directly to the router and the other on wi-fi right beside said router. File copy speed between them: about 3MBps

So, the homeplug drops a few MBps and the wireless on the laptop is a serious factor there was well obviously but am I right in thinking that I should be seeing much better speeds than this across the board? Or is this what I'd expect to see without buying a much better router or something? Anyone got any other idea or want me to run any other tests to provide more info?

What speed is the wired side of the network? 100 or 1000?

What speed (letter) is the wireless side of the network?

That's for each device on the network

You should set all network settings to the best settings of the slowest device (ie 1000 full duplex if possible on the wired) and the same for the wireless settings, make sure if all devices support go to N and full duplex

Malc

The router is this one so it's n capable from the wireless side and 10/100 wired.
The only wireless devices on the network at the time of the tests were the two laptops which are both n capable.
The LAN status on the desktop PC shows a speed of 1.0 Gbps so I presume that means it's gigabit capable? The actual hardware lists as Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller if that helps answer the question.
The homeplugs that the desktop PC then connects to the router through are these. They replaced an old set of no name 85Mbps plugs but swapping them in seems to have made zero difference to the file transfer speeds to and from the desktop.

clicking on "configure" on your network card you should have a window like that. If your router only supports 100 on wired, then change that setting (or similar) to 100mb full duplex and make sure it's set the same on your router too (if there is a place to change it).

Malc

I've changed the setting on the desktop's network card as advised; although I can't see an option on our crappy router software to make a similar change. I'll run some speed test later when I get a minute. Thanks malc.

Test one is OK 11MB isn't bad for a 100Mbs link.

For Test 2 is "homeplugged" one of those Ethernet power plugs? If so what speed\make and have you checked there is a firmware update? You would need 200mbs plugs to come close to a 100mb wired link, 500mbs would be better.

For test 3 have you checked the channel your wireless is on one vs. the other wireless connections around your home? Try doing this and moving your SSID to an unused channel.