Wireless for internet, wired for sharing files - how to set up?

[David Smithz]

Hi there,

I have three PC's connected to my broadband Router via wireless network
because cabling is not an option. I found that when transferring large
files, it goes quite slow because I assume all the wireless bandwidth is
getting used up and the signal is not the strongest.

Therefore I just purchased a traditional 8 port network switch with the
intention of wiring together the three network PC's so that when
transferring files between each other, they used the wired local network.
When on the internet they go via wireless to the Router which is connected
to the broadband.

Also ideally the PC that is actually a laptop, it would be nice if whatever
setup I had still kept it easy when I took the laptop on the road (therefore
not having to reset the ip address all the time - but this is not an
essential worry)

However, how do I actually set this up to work well?

I tried making the local wired LAN have fixed IP address on a different
network number (my router is a DhCP server in the 192.168.4.X range, so I
gave each PC on the wired connection an IP address in the range 192.168.0.X.
in each case I set the DNS server and default gateway to be the router.

While I got some results for a little while, I would ultimately lose my
internet connection.

So what is the optimum setup to make this work?

Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Richard G. Harper]

In theory you could do this by binding an alternate protocol (like IPX/SPX
or NetBEUI) to the wired network card, then putting File and Printer Sharing
on that network connection and un-binding it from the wireless network card.
In reality this sometimes gets a bit messy and gives you lots of headaches
troubleshooting connectivity problems.

If transferring files is something you only do on occasion you might
consider using a USB connectivity device, which would bypass networking
completely and if all the computers support USB 2.0 would be much faster
than any network connection.

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Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
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