Possible to create wifi access point with 3G and wifi card?

davenewt

Hi all, possibly a silly question - I have 02 broadband on my desktop PC... which also has a netgear wifi card. Can I use this card to turn my PC into a wireless access point (i.e. broadcast a wireless signal, not connect to a wireless router), so I can connect a laptop, or ipod, to the PC's broadband?

Random

Yes you can. Use internet connection sharing and wifi in ad-hoc mode.

Some devices may not work with adhoc mode though.

davenewt

Thx for the quick reply. Ok so I've just entered a network name in the netgear software, selected ad-hoc as the network type and applied settings... it seems to have created a network and my ipod can connect to it via wifi... but it won't load any web pages as it says it's not connected to the internet.

Have tried disabling my firewall on the PC but still no joy... and my 3G connection is shared (works fine on the xbox when connected to the PC via ethernet)... so why can my ipod not see the internet? Any ideas?

ttm

You probably need to set up Internet Connection Sharing on your laptop to get it to work. I'll find you an article on it brb

This should point you in the right direction

davenewt

Thanks, still can't crack it... the 02 connection is connected and shared. The ad-hoc network using the netgear card is set up, I have re-done this with WEP, and have connected to it using the ipod. Still no internet on the ipod though... grr!

ttm

I'd ignore the WEP till you have it working first without.

The laptops Wireless IP address should now be 192.168.0.1 and the IPod should be getting an IP like 192.168.0.2 afaik if your still on a 169.154.x.x network it isn't set up right.

ttm

davenewt wrote: »

Have tried disabling my firewall on the PC but still no joy... and my 3G connection is shared (works fine on the xbox when connected to the PC via ethernet)... so why can my ipod not see the internet? Any ideas?

If that works then ICS is set up to work with the wired ethernet adaptor and not the wireless adaptor. Either change the that over or you could try bridging the Wireless and Wired adaptors.

davenewt

ttm wrote: »

If that works then ICS is set up to work with the wired ethernet adaptor and not the wireless adaptor. Either change the that over or you could try bridging the Wireless and Wired adaptors.

Thanks... I noticed on the 3G connection (properties > advanced tab) that ICS was set up to share with the Local Area Connection... so I disabled ICS and set it up again, selecting "Wireless Network Connection" as the connection to share with instead.

Still not happening though.

Also cannot bridge the Wireless and LAN connections, presumably as the Wireless is set up to share the 3G connection... despite it not doing so yet!

davenewt

ttm wrote: »

I'd ignore the WEP till you have it working first without.

The laptops Wireless IP address should now be 192.168.0.1 and the IPod should be getting an IP like 192.168.0.2 afaik if your still on a 169.154.x.x network it isn't set up right.

Well, the ipod's IP is indeed 169.x.x.x so looks like you're right there. How do I fix that issue?

Thx for all the tips so far! I can feel we're almost there

ttm

davenewt wrote: »

Thanks... I noticed on the 3G connection (properties > advanced tab) that ICS was set up to share with the Local Area Connection... so I disabled ICS and set it up again, selecting "Wireless Network Connection" as the connection to share with instead.

Still not happening though.

Also cannot bridge the Wireless and LAN connections, presumably as the Wireless is set up to share the 3G connection... despite it not doing so yet!

The bridging was just a guess as I've seen it working lots when it should't

So now ipconfig should now show the wireless connection IP address as being 192.168.0.1 and the IPOD should pick up an IP address from the laptop in the same range.

davenewt

Wireless IP address is 192.168.0.1 - yes.

ipod IP is still 169.x.x.x though - set to use DHCP. Should I change the setting on the ipod to STATIC or something?

ttm

You could set the IPod to have an IP address of 192.168.0.x where x is between 2 and 254 and the default gateway will be 192.168.0.1 (the laptop wireless adaptor) and I havn't used ICS for a while but afaik it might also be the DNS server so try 192.168.0.1 for the DNS server or use the DNS server the 3 conenction is using (ipconfig /all to get it)

Edit> Check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126/ and http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308006

davenewt

ipconfig shows...

Ethernet adapter Wireless Network Connection:
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0

I have tried setting the ipod's wireless settings to STATIC and specifying the IP as 192.168.0.2, the subnet to be the same as above, and the router and dns to be 192.168.0.1 but still not getting anywhere.

Am going to have to come back to this tomorrow but thanks for the help so far, it's appreciated!

Have tried to find a straightforward guide for doing this elsewhere but obviously no luck as yet.

Edit - when ipod is set to DHCP it has the ip 169.x.x.x and only subnet also filled in. If I manually fill in DNS with the same IP as the DNS shown for the 3G connection, and retry safari, it no longer says it's not connected to the internet, but it times out when trying to load a web page.

This is sooooooooo frustrating!

Edit 2 - ipconfig /all shows that my wireless internet connection has DHCP disabled... maybe I should enable this, but for the life of me I've no idea how.

davenewt

In the cold light of day I am kicking myself for upgrading to the ipod OS 3.0 as soon as it came out. Seems there are a lot of people who just did the same who are now complaining about inability to connect to wifi and a bunch of other related wifi problems with 3.0.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2050071&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2051550&tstart=0
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2045092&tstart=0

Will let the dust settle, hopefully Apple will release an update which will fix these issues and I'll come back to this later.

In the meantime, thanks for the help, Random and ttm, it's much appreciated

davenewt

[double post, sorry!]