Hey,

Basically I'm trying to work out how to set up a wireless access point on my
laptop. My laptop is on a wireless home network and I want to set up a mini
open network. I have been planning on using a USB wireless dongle which can
be used to create an access point and put the dongle in my laptop. There is
already a wireless network card in the laptop and I seem to be having issues
with either the access point working or the wireless working but not both and
I couldn't get the access point to access the internet (via the wireless
card). I tried using both the software that came with the dongle and the
windows network connection tools (to no avail).

If anyone could give me a bit of assistance with this it would be greatly
appreciated.
--
cheers

MR EDDD wrote:
> Hey,
>
> Basically I'm trying to work out how to set up a wireless access point on my
> laptop. My laptop is on a wireless home network and I want to set up a mini
> open network. I have been planning on using a USB wireless dongle which can
> be used to create an access point and put the dongle in my laptop. There is
> already a wireless network card in the laptop and I seem to be having issues
> with either the access point working or the wireless working but not both and
> I couldn't get the access point to access the internet (via the wireless
> card). I tried using both the software that came with the dongle and the
> windows network connection tools (to no avail).
>
> If anyone could give me a bit of assistance with this it would be greatly
> appreciated.

I assume that this is what you are attempting to do:
(a) have the laptop access the Internet using its built-in wireless card
to connect to your existing wireless router and (b) have other computers
access the Internet via a wireless connection first to your laptop and
then a second wireless connection from the laptop to your router.

Because those other wireless computers could simply get to the Internet
by connecting to your wireless router, I assume that what you're
attempting to accomplish is separate these other computers from your
existing LAN. There are at least two better ways to do that.

If you don't care about letting *any* wireless computer on your LAN talk
to any other device on your LAN (i.e., just get to the Internet), you
could turn on your router's "AP Isolation" feature. Here's what Linksys
says about that: "Creates a separate virtual network for your wireless
network. When this feature is enabled, each of your wireless clients
will be in its own virtual network and will not be able to communicate
with each other. You may want to utilize this feature if you have many
guests that frequent your wireless network."

If your router doesn't have "AP Isolation," or if you just want to
isolate the "other computers" but have your own wireless computers share
files and printers, use a second wireless router. This has the advantage
that you won't have to leave the laptop on. See, e.g.,
http://ezlan.net/shield.html

However, to do it your way, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306126
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314066/en-us
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_ics/

And make sure to set the USB wireless adapter to use a different
wireless channel than the one your router uses (I suggest using channels
1 and 11)

--
Lem

Apollo 11 - 40 years ago:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ap...0th/index.html