29 replies to this topic

[Andrew Smith]

Hey all.

Having a problem which I've been racking my brains over for a few days, trying to figure things out. As its a bit of a lengthy one to explain, I took the liberty of recording a video earlier to show in more detail the problem I'm having. It involves try to share a wireless internet connection through a server and then through a router.

Here's the YouTube link:



As promised in the video, here are a few screen shots of some details.

ipconfig with ICS disabled: https://www.dropbox....icsdisabled.jpg
ipconfig with ICS enabled: https://www.dropbox..../icsenabled.jpg

LAN info pane: https://www.dropbox....cybtiwp/lan.jpg
Wireless info pane: https://www.dropbox....03/wireless.jpg

I forgot to take anything showing any settings of the router. If there's anything I haven't included which could help, please do let me know as I'm not entirely sure what information to include. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks!

Andrew.

[xendrome]

Why don't you just use a wireless router? It there some specific reason, it's like you are trying to find a solution to a problem which doesn't exist...

[YouWhat]

after watching the video, you are trying to access 2 different networks through 1 connection using the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, this limits the connections to say the routers range of 192.168.1.x and the other network wont be reached.

You need to change the subnet mask to 255.255.0.0 if memory serves me correctly so as it is shared between the 2 different ranges (it been a while since done anything like this so I might be wrong here, but I think that is all you need to change)

**Edit**

Upon watching video again, I think you need to do ICS through the other network connection so as the network you are trying to share to is able to access the internet through the server then, and the router it is connected to acts as a switch for the connections through the server.

[Andrew Smith]

Xendrome, the router there is a wireless one but to my knowledge, I can't connect to the wireless internet connection provided by the IT department AND allow computers to access our own little network for the likes of file sharing. What I don't want on the other client computers is to have to connect to the internet or our own private network. I want both of them to be available at the same time and have the internet run through the small network we have in place. I hope we're thinking along the same lines.

Thanks, YouWhat. So I think if I enable ICS on the wifi connection, I can no longer access the server from any of the other clients and the internet certainly doesn't get shared to any of them regardless if they're connected by wire or wirelessly. I can check in to this tomorrow though just to be sure.

Thanks so far

Andrew.

[YouWhat]

From the screen shots and the videos, what I saw was server to router was wired connection, and the wireless connection for internet on server, hence 2 seperate networks, but the subnet mask on server for the "shared" connection should be changed as I mentioned above to bridge the 2 networks as they on 2 different subnets.

[+PeterUK]

You would use ICS if the WAN IP was on your PC NIC and by the looks of it you ICS the wireless to the NIC and not ICS on the NIC to the wireless (unless your wireless to the NAT) since you have a NAT in place you just need to bridge the NIC & wireless.

[TPreston]

So you have two networks your internal network for your lan and the external network for your wan which in your case happens to be a usb connection.

You need some kind of routing between the two and different subnets.

Since you have it connected to the server you can use routing and remote access to do nat (or TMG) then you can simply add the router on the internal lan and relay on the dhcp,dns etc you have in place already.

ie connect the router to the switch and give it a LAN ip.

ICS is best avoided on servers it only works on 192.168.1.x or you have to modify the registry or your ip addressing scheme.

[Andrew Smith]

OK thanks YouWhat. That's something I'll be sure to try! Do I change the routers subnet or the servers subnet under xp's tcp/ip settings? Also, do I not just change it to match the wireless connections subnet which ends in 252.0? I'm guessing the 0s in 255.255.0.0 correspond to xxx of the IP addresses? Confusing myself really now!

Andrew.

[+BudMan]

"allow computers to access our own little network for the likes of file sharing."

How many computers/servers do you have in your little network? And where are they wired too to allow your file sharing?

You mention you "zero" out the gateway of your lan interface when you connect the wireless dongle - do you need that gateway to access anything. Where are you getting your wired IP from? Are you setting them static?

I don't understand why you don't just wire you machines to the wireless router and let it give you an IP and use it as you gateway.

If all you have is handful of computers, **** even if it was hundreds.. If they are just a isolated network, with no other networks to connect to.. I don't really understand the issue - why did your IT dept hand out those dongles, you mention you have quite a few of them? When they could just wire your existing boxes to that router.

edit: So this is a hospital radio station - so its not tied to the actual hospital network at ALL?? I sure hope not if your just using wireless without any encryption.

So just noticed your lan setting did get an IP from dhcp.. What is acting as your dhcp server, is that something you control, or IT dept and you have access when not connected to wireless to other computers, domain? etc.. Trying to understand who controls that your computers are on a 192.l68.1.0/24 network? And if you get to other networks like 192.168.2.0/24 when using the normal wired interface and its gateway?

[Andrew Smith]

There are 3 computers wired to the router, the server and 2 others. There are 3 more which are connected to the router wirelessly. The network is mainly used for file sharing really as the stations music collection is spread out a bit amongst a few of the computers (something we're working on sorting).

If I don't zero out the gateway on the routers settings page, only the wireless internet connection on the server will work and access to the LAN won't or visa versa depending on what adaptor you disable. I can't answer your question about if we need it to access anything as I'm not sure. As far as I'm concerned when I zero that out, both the Internet and LAN are accessible on the server.

The wired IP comes from DHCP on the router 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102 and so on. I'd love it if I could just plug things in and have it all work! I wouldn't be having this issue to start with if it did. I can only wish.

We're all volunteers at the hospital radio station and our computers are not provided by the hospital trust or IT department. They've kindly provided us with the means of accessing the internet through wifi over a guest network for patients and clinical use. So really, we're on our own with it. They have no links or responsibility for us. I hope this helps clear up a few things.

Cheers!

Andrew.

[Riva]

Hello
I see what you are doing and why it is failing.
First of all when you enable internet sharing, windows will set its IP Address to 192.168.0.1 which is why you lose access to the file share after you enable ICS.
My suggestion is:
Server
====
WiFi adapter: Static IP (valid for what your IT team has configured for their network)
Ethernet adapter: Static IP which is different to the wifi adapters. E.g 172.19.1.1, 255.255.255.0
Install the following roles/components: Routing and Remote Access, DNS, DHCP
Configure the DHCP and DNS servers for your own little network there
Configure NAT from the wifi adapter to the Ethernet

Router
====
Get rid of it and replace it with a switch where all PCs will connect to.

So the overall network architectureis that your server assigns IP Addresses (DHCP) and provides name resolution in that scope (DNS). The server also performs NAT between the two networks that have totally different IP addresses. The DHCP server also advertises the NAT server as a router so that any machine that obtains an IP address from that server will also retrieve info about the NAT server.

Please ensure your DHCP and DNS services only listen to the Ethernet ip address to avoid bringing your companies network down

[Andrew Smith]

Thanks for your feedback, Riva. So the IP address that we get given by the trust's wifi network is assigned by DHCP so we can't set a static IP as its out of our control (I think this right?). The server is always on and therefor should never go past its lease time. I'll try the other steps you suggested regarding the ethernet adaptor.

The problem with a switch is that there are other computers that we can't run network cable to. Its a PFI hospital as well which means we can go putting holes in walls or even securing cable with clips to walls etc. Running network cable to the other computers is sadly out of the question.

Andrew.

[Riva]

Andrew Smith, on 27 February 2013 - 00:41, said:

Thanks for your feedback, Riva. So the IP address that we get given by the trust's wifi network is assigned by DHCP so we can't set a static IP as its out of our control (I think this right?). The server is always on and therefor should never go past its lease time. I'll try the other steps you suggested regarding the ethernet adaptor.

simply set the values that DHCP has set for you, as statics

Andrew Smith, on 27 February 2013 - 00:41, said:

The problem with a switch is that there are other computers that we can't run network cable to. Its a PFI hospital as well which means we can go putting holes in walls or even securing cable with clips to walls etc. Running network cable to the other computers is sadly out of the question.

Keep the router but turn off DHCP on that router.

[+BudMan]

There are 3 computers wired to the router"

What router??? That router you show in the video that gives you internet via wireless? Or that is your router that does not have internet?? You say you get internet via a tplink wireless, and then show a tplink router -- I assumed you got your internet from that router.. But that is not the case??

Draw out your network please -- your making this WAY too complicated!!! See that wireless network you on 192.168.216 /22 -- who in the world wold setup a /22 on a wireless network?? There is no freaking way that little tplink is going to be able to handle up to 1022 hosts.

So the wireless network that gives you internet is NOT the tplink in your video?

You mention some machine are wireless - so they are wireless to your router, and not the internet wireless?

What is the ssid of your wireless network, the one you show is uhguest and its not encrypted and has a /22 mask.

[+BudMan]

Ok this is how I understand your network - is this correct. Once we are clear on your setup, then we can work out how to share that internet connection while allowing your computers to still share stuff



You might have switch connect to your router as well? Not clear on that - but in general this is your setup correct?

Here's the thing if you use ics on your server -- yes its going to change your lan network to 192.168.0.0/24 and give itself a 192.168.0.1 address. Your other computers would now either get dhcp from your router, or your ics dhcp server that gets turned on when you enable ics.

Quick easy thing if that is your correct setup. Is to just turn off dhcp on your router. Set its IP to be on the 192.168.0.0/24 network - say .254 so you can still manage its wireless. You would want to verify what the ics dhcp server uses as its scope so you don't conflict..

Now let all your boxes get dhcp from your ics box - and they will all be on the 192.168.0.0/24 network and use that ics box as their gateway to the internet.

Please verify this is your setup and we can walk you through setting this up.