internet connection through wireless XP PC and fedora

[yat81]

Hello, my problem may be out of linux topic, and maybe some of the linux lover will feel offended. Hence, i apologize if u feel that way, but at least we can share some knowledge here..

I have notebook with wireless ipw-2200 and a lan interface running on XP, and another one is fedora pc with one lan card. I connected to internet through my notebook wireless-ipw2200, so in order to enable my fedora to access throuh internet, i connected my fedora machine via cross cable to my notebook. Sound easy but it doesn't work.

FYI, my wireless ip is 192.168.0.xxx/24, gateway 192.168.0.1. The lan on XP is 192.168.0.xxy, and lan on fedora i set to 192.168.0.xxz. I set the gateway in my fedora with lan XP ip (192.168.xxy). The details is provided below:

XP:
Wireless: 192.168.0.xxx (via dhcp), gateway 192.168.0.1
Lan: 192.168.0.xxy

fedora:
Lan: 192.168.0.xxz, gateway 192.168.0.xxy (Lan XP ip)

How do i enable my fedora to connect to internet through my notebook? FYI, ip forwarding in fedora is set to 1, but i have no idea to set winXP as router. My fedora only have LAN connected through XP. Your help is much highly appreciated.

[koen]

you can set XP to do "ip forwarding" - it's a checkbox some where in the (Advanced ?) network properties. It could also be called 'routing' and you may have to install "routing and remote access" to have it available - I don't remember too precisely.

If I understand the layout of your network correctly, probably this won't be enough to connect your Fedora to the internet. You're using the same network (ip range) for both wireless and wired, so the XP may not know which interface to use when it has to route from the Fedora to the internet and back.

You probably need separate ip ranges for wired and wireless.

[yat81]

i thought i must use the same ip range? I go to the advanced tab you mentioned, under wireless internet connection, and i click 'Allow others to connect to internet through this pc' but it says that:

"An error occured when internet sharing was being enabled

Internet connection sharing can't be enabled. A LAN connection is already configured with the IP address that is required for automatic IP addressing."

and then i read this article from windows website:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=309642

it says something about ip 192.168.0.1 can't be used, cause it's used by ICS (Internet connection sharing) in XP. The problem here AP is not under my control, and it's already configured with 192.168.0.1, which is gateway to internet. Should I turn the forwarding in my XP? What do i have to do with my fedora PC?

And i found this article in microsoft (sorry again for linux lover!!)

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=315236

i don't want to mess up with XP regedit, unless i have no other choices here. Anyone has similar problem with me?

[koen]

[quote] I thought i must use the same ip range? I [/quote]
It all depends on how you set it up. Like, with Windows ICS you could use 1 range for the clients, but you'd need a second range for the connection to the AP (as is shown by the error you get when you try to enable ICS ).
What you're trying is let the WIndows box route from its WLAN card to the ethernet card, and routing is meant for connections [b]between[/b] networks, not [b]inside[/b] 1 network. So there you'd have wireless and wired on different networks (i.e. seperate ip ranges).

ICS would have been nice - it's in faxt a Network Adress Translation trick (a.k.a."Masquerading" in Linux) but MS as usual wants to hide the technicalities from the user so it runs a wizzard that creates a floppy with a program you can run on the computer(s) that will have to use the shared internet connection. Of course such a program will only riun on Windows, and you apparently don't get to choose what addresses you can use.

Too bad your Linux box doesn't have wireless - "ICS" is quite easy on Linux, and without the restrictions i just mentioned.

I'll have a look at it later, maybe I can come up with something. Meanwile, think about that registry key.
I'm sure you can find (and buy) programs that promise all kinds of magical internet connection sharing for XP, and all they actually do is set that registry key and show some pretty dialog boxes where you can click OK and Continue and Finish. So why not just set it yourself with regedit ?

[koen]

OK, here you go :
http://www.cryer.co.uk/brian/windows/howto_nt_ipforwarding.htm

I may have confused WP and Win2000/2003 Server before because it's not exactly as I remember it, but apparently it can be done.
I can't check it because the only XP machine I have here tells me that I need 2 LAN or high speed internet connections to do this. That also makes me think that maybe it won't work between an LAN and a WLAN - although it should because a route is a route, no matter what the medium (radiowaves, ethernet, ...) is.

I was thinking of a fallback plan with an additional computer running Linux and act as a router to the internet for both the wireless and the wired lan, but that might be difficult to implement as you don't have access to the router,

You're not just surfing over your neighbour's access point, are you ?