Hi folks, here's the story.

Running Slack 9.1. I have an ACX100 chipset wireless card which has a sourceforge project for drivers that aren't too reliable. I attempted to connect my desktop PC by a Cat5 cable into my laptop's ethernet port and use the wireless connection of the laptop. I was hoping the connection would run through the laptop and I'd have internet capabilities with the desktop PC. To accomplish this, I bridged the connections under WinXP on the laptop.

Desktop has a Asus mobo with integrated 3Com Gigabit lan port. I downloaded, made, and insmod'ed the 3c2000 module. I ran netconfig, I can run ifconfig, I tried ifconfig eth0 up which didn't pull an IP through DHCP. I tried setting an IP with ifconfig and when I try to ping it echos "Network Unreachable".

I'm thinking maybe this is a routing issue? I'm not sure what commands to issue under route to make the Desktop understand it needs to connect to the laptop first.

Thoughts:

- I tried route add default gw 192.168.0.1 eth0 to set a default gateway to my router.. didn't help.
- I tried to add a default gateway with the IP of my desktop and it didn't work.

Also.. any further explanation of exactly how a bridge works, or how else I might need to set things up in XP would be helpful. Soon I'll be moving and will be able to connect the PC by cable to the router so I can get away from all these issues.

Thanks.

make sure your using a crossover cable!

Crossover cable..didn't think of that. I can try it tonight when I get home.

desktop ->ethernet ->laptop ->wireless ->{internet}

like that?

Does the laptop have a wireless device that is like a cellular modem or is it using wireless to connect to a 3rd device that has an internet connection? (sorry no clue what an ACX100 is)

You mentioned bridge but what you actually want sounds like a router which is different so don't mix the two terms up or reading all those FAQs will just get you more confused!

If you are connecting the desktop to the laptop with ethernet check that you can ping the IP of the laptop's ethernet port from the desktop and then try to ping the desktop's IP from the laptop.

The desktop needs to have the IP of the laptop's ethernet port as it's default gateway.

Try to ping the IP address assigned to the laptop's wireless device from the desktop, if that doesn't work the the laptop isn't set up to route from the network to the wireless correctly.

Darin,

Yeah, sorry I was unclear. I have it as Desktop -> crossover cable -> laptop -> wireless connection -> wireless router -> cable modem -> internet.

The ACX100 is just the chipset of the wireless PCMCIA card I'm using, not very well supported.

I can ping the ethernet port of the laptop from the PC and vice versa but not ping the wireless card IP. I don't think the XP bridge is what I want.

OK that clears things up, still have some questions but pressing on...

Desktop -> crossover cable -> laptop -> wireless connection -> wireless router -> cable modem -> {internet}

It would be easier if you could plug the desktop into either the wireless router or the cable modem (somewhere thats marked bold above) along with the laptop, this either requires some sort of hub or extra ethernet connection between the wireless router and cable modem or that you replace the ethernet card in the desktop with a wireless one. -I just reread your post and noticed you mentioned doing this when you move, it might be easier to do it now as well.

The wireless router or the cable modem probably has some sort of firewall/router where it gives your laptop an IP address like 192.168.0.2, what you would then need is to either plug the desktop in at this point so it gets an address on this section of your network or another "range" of IP addresses for the 2 computer network (the crossover cable) like 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 assigned.

If you have to go through the laptop then:

The desktop is running Slack and has integrated 3Com Gigabit lan and the 3c2000 loads and you have an IP address for it? It can ping itself? Ping the ethernet connection on the laptop that it's cabled into? The desktop has default gateway set to the laptop's IP address, the one for it's ethernet port that you plugged into, NOT it's wireless IP address?

The laptop is also running Slack? It's wireless connection works and it can "surf the net" with no problems? It has it's ethernet port configured with a valid IP address that is different than the IP address for the wireless adapter but on the same subnet as the desktop? You can ping this IP address on the laptop? on the desktop? You have routing turned on and iptables set up on the laptop (sorry I'm not really an iptables expert but I can figure out the rest of what you need.) You mentioned XP, the laptop runs WinXP? XP has a little wizard for sharing it's connections so you may be able to run that to get the connection shared with the desktop box. If you are at this point in Linux, you could skip IPtables and just set up the laptop as a normal router although you can probably find more info on setting it up as a firewall which won't hurt either.