Networking problem

Mailman86 · 24 Dec 2006 at 00:34

I would have been more specific with the title but I didn't know what else to write!

I've had a look through the stickies and I don't think they have the answers I'm looking for.

In preparation for when I get my Wii on Christmas day, I'm trying to sort out some way I can get it connected to the Internet. There is currently one computer downstairs which connects to the Internet using a USB modem. Then there is a crossover cable connected to the downstairs computer which goes all the way upstairs in to my computer so I can have access to the Internet with my PC. To do this ICS needed to be set up. Now I have a wireless access card connected to my computer which I want to create some sort of software access point (SoftAP) with. It's with this that I want to connect my Wii to. Now for some reason I can't seem to get my computer to direct the shared Internet connection it is receiving to the SoftAP so a device connecting to the SoftAP can use the Internet. At the moment all I have is a Nintendo DS and a copy of Mario Kart to test the connectivity with, but I'd imagine this would be the best thing to use anyway as I'd guess a DS's and a Wii's wireless infrastructure would work pretty much the same.

If that sounded a bit confusing I've tried drawing a picture of what exactly I want to do. Even though my Paint skills aren't exactly what you'd call anything decent hopefully you will be able to see what I mean.

I use the Asus software that came with the wireless card, but I also have the option to use Ralink's software (from my understanding the card is an Asus branded Ralink card).

I believe what is causing the problem is that my computer is already using ICS to connect to the Internet and for some reason will not relay this connection to the wireless SoftAP. I've tried setting up a SoftAP using the Asus software with my Ethernet card as the Internet connection, but this doesn't seem to work. I've tried manually bridging the Ethernet and Wireless cards as well but to no success. After a search on Google I though that maybe setting up an Ad-hoc network would solve my problem but it does not (I do not know what one is to be honest)!

So basically I've tried everything I can think off, but still cannot get this setup to work. In theory it seems very possible but in practise the problem is a little more complex than it sounds.

Before someone says "Just buy a router", well that would have course be easier, but it isn't really an option. This would only be a temporary solution until I go back to my Uni house where we have a wireless router, so I don't want to be investing in any extra equipment.

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

tolien · 24 Dec 2006 at 01:18

Bridge the interface that connects to the downstairs machine and the wireless?

Mailman86 · 24 Dec 2006 at 01:41

tolien said:
Bridge the interface that connects to the downstairs machine and the wireless?

Ok I've done that before and basically I can get my DS to connect to the SoftAP ok (A MAC address appears in the SoftAP's event log when it tries) but it can't actually use the Internet. On my DS it says:

"Unable to obtain an IP address. Move within range of the access point or check DCHP settings."

Now I've worked out that the DS connects to the access point fine, so I figure there might be a problem with IP address allocation somewhere?

Oh and I feel I should mention that because of previous networking problems, both machines use Windows firewall as I found that seems to cause less trouble.

tolien · 24 Dec 2006 at 10:29

It should get an IP from the machine running ICS.

If it's connecting properly, manually setting an IP and subnet mask and pinging the machine should give you a result (or pinging the DS from the PC).

James07 · 24 Dec 2006 at 11:20

Try networking folders, this way youll be able to see if its actually working. Im assuming you have done the 'setting up new connection > connect to another computer on this network' etc...

Mailman86 · 24 Dec 2006 at 17:14

tolien said:
It should get an IP from the machine running ICS.

If it's connecting properly, manually setting an IP and subnet mask and pinging the machine should give you a result (or pinging the DS from the PC).

Ok I just deleted all the bridges and started from scratch. This time I just bridged the Ethernet interface which is connected to the crossover cable and the wireless interface on my computer manually under network connections by highlighting both, right clicking and clicking on the bridge connections option. I don't get any complaints from Windows about the wireless connection and the Internet works fine on my machine. When I say no complaints from Windows I mean that the little wireless computer icon in the system tray flashes green every now and again and no exclamation marks appear against it.

Here is a little picture of what my network connections look like and also what my ASUS WLAN Card Settings look like:

Note that I did not add the LAN adaptor to the home network section in the Asus interface myself, bridging the two interfaces in Windows manually adds it there for you.

Also if I start from scratch without any bridges and I add the LAN interface to the home network section in the Asus interface I get a message to say to add the two interfaces to a bridge which is why I am doing it in the Windows interface.

Oh and I think when I got the error I had on my DS which I mentioned in my previous post, I had added the 1394 connection to the Internet section in the Asus interface as this seems to replicate the same error message. When actually doing this in the Asus interface the program reports that ICS has failed, but it still seems to make some changes somewhere. :confused:

And finally I did try setting a random static IP for the bridge in the Windows interface by right clicking on the bridge and selecting properties under networking connections and then modifying the TCP/IP properties on the general tab. This seems to disconnect the Internet from my PC altogether so that doesn't seem to work. With that I set the IP address manually and the subnet mask is generated automatically, but the default gateway and two dns server sections are left blank as I have no idea what to fill them with.

Is that what you meant when you mentioned about setting a static IP address?

Oh and the DS interface is quite simple and the DS can see the wireless connection, but when it goes to connect it just says "unable to connect to an access point". It's almost certainly in range as the aerial and DS are less than a meter apart so it can't be that.

James07 said:
Try networking folders, this way youll be able to see if its actually working. Im assuming you have done the 'setting up new connection > connect to another computer on this network' etc...

I can view a shared folder on my downstairs PC fine so the connection between the two PCs seems to be ok. I don't have a spare PC to test the wireless functionality and all I have is a DS at the moment to test it, so I can't test shared folders over that. The DS has no such functionality so that can't be used either.

When setting up ICS between the downstairs PC and mine I used the Home network wizard on both computers to set it up which excluding the firewall problems I had at the time worked fine. Everything else I have done has been done as I have described so far.

tolien · 24 Dec 2006 at 20:18

Forget the 1394 interface, it's your firewire port(s).

Mailman86 said:
And finally I did try setting a random static IP for the bridge in the Windows interface by right clicking on the bridge and selecting properties under networking connections and then modifying the TCP/IP properties on the general tab. This seems to disconnect the Internet from my PC altogether so that doesn't seem to work. With that I set the IP address manually and the subnet mask is generated automatically, but the default gateway and two dns server sections are left blank as I have no idea what to fill them with.

Is that what you meant when you mentioned about setting a static IP address?

No, I meant for the DS - DHCP has been known to screw up across Windows bridges, though it might not be possible to get into those options (I've never used a DS, so I've no idea).

Manually setting IPs for the bridge should've worked fine though (not that it's terribly useful), provided the IP was in the right subnet (in your case, all but the last digit should've been the same). The "automatically generated" subnet mask isn't so automatic - it's the same whatever you plugin (AFAIK, I've only ever seen 255.255.255.0), and the default gateway (and DNS servers) should've been the machine running ICS.

Mailman86 · 24 Dec 2006 at 22:23

tolien said:
Forget the 1394 interface, it's your firewire port(s).

No, I meant for the DS - DHCP has been known to screw up across Windows bridges, though it might not be possible to get into those options (I've never used a DS, so I've no idea).

Manually setting IPs for the bridge should've worked fine though (not that it's terribly useful), provided the IP was in the right subnet (in your case, all but the last digit should've been the same). The "automatically generated" subnet mask isn't so automatic - it's the same whatever you plugin (AFAIK, I've only ever seen 255.255.255.0), and the default gateway (and DNS servers) should've been the machine running ICS.

I just set the gateway and the primary and secondary dns servers to the addresses found from typing ipconfig/all in the command prompt on my PC in to my DS. The addresses are all the same and the last digit is one so I can only assume it's the IP address of the machine running ICS like you said. I set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0 which was the one you mentioned and what I was given before. I then set the ip address to the same as the machine running ICS (the downstairs machine) with the last digits changed to avoid an IP address conflict. And what do you know. It worked!

Thank you very much and have a very merry Christmas!