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beagle72
join:2004-08-31
Ithaca, NY
|  [Connection Sharing] How to connect inside LAN to wifi hotspot?
A friend lives above a pedestrian mall which has free wifi access provided by a local ISP. He cannot currently afford residential broadband so has been using dialup with his 2-PC setup.
The wifi signal is easily usable in his apartment -- I've surfed it with my laptop. Signal strength is good.
I'd like to bridge his 2-PC LAN to the wifi hotspot outside.
Existing equipment: he already has a hub connecting the two PC's, and a Linksys router for sharing a WAN to a LAN (not currently used, of course, but available).
Can I plug a wireless bridge into the WAN port of the Linksys? Or is there some other/better way to distribute the wifi signal to the LAN?
I realize we could install a wifi card into a PC, but then the LAN would be dependent on that machine -- I'd prefer to distribute the LAN from the router so both PC's are independent.
Also, for what it's worth, the wifi hotspot assigns a LAN address to clients; i.e. 192.168.0.xx. Will it be a problem to feed this address via a bridge into the WAN port of the router, which will then assign LAN addresses inside the apartment?
PS. No, I don't know what the ISP would think of this (they know people live on the mall), but my friend is not into heavy traffic, just typical surfing and email. And yes, my friend is real -- it's not me!
I'm experienced with setting up wired and wireless networks but haven't encountered this particular situation before. If the answer is simply to buy a wireless bridge, then great.
thanks for any advice,
Aaron | |
funchords
Hello
Premium,MVM
join:2001-03-11
Washington, DC
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| Re: [Connection Sharing] How to connect inside LAN to wifi hotsp
Because the HotSpot is issuing private addresses, it would probably be best and more foolproof if each machine had its own wireless card.
He should add a software firewall on each machine, as usual, but he probably should rope out both WAN and LAN with it since anyone connecting to the hotspot will be in his subnet. He can set up a PPTP connection between the two machines so that he can share files and do the LAN thing.
Otherwise,
If he has one of those Linksys routers that accepts the 3rd-party firmware, I understand you can put that into client mode and do the wireless bridge thing.
--
Robb Topolski
http://www.funchords.com/
Hillsboro, Oregon USA
Kindness is treating someone better than they deserve.
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