Sharing an internet connection between two computers

[FrontLine]

Ok so here is the deal, Im on vacation and I've got my laptop (running Vista) with my Verizon wireless card that gives me access to the net nearly anywhere in the US. This is great in that I can get work done at night after the kids go to bed. Now for the catch..

My wife brought her laptop along (running XP) as well. She has a need to get on the net. The only problem is that this hotel doesnt offer net access of any kind. Now I know we could lug her laptop (and the kids) to the nearest starbucks, but what I really want to do is share my internet connection. So I went through the Vista control panel, went to networks and sharing, created my own network and no dice, nada, the fat lady aint sining. She cant connect. first I tried it with WPA encryption, nothing. Then tried it with WEP encryption, nothing. Finally I turned off all encryption and still no luck.

So can anyone please tell me what Im doing wrong here?

 

[Trekker4747]

I'm guessing it won't work because the Verizon wireless card isn't meant to be used in that fashion. That is, there's nothing on it to recieve singals from your wife's computer.

If you were setting up a network in your home, for example, you'd connect your modem to a router and the ROUTER would broadcast/recieve the signals from the computers on the netwok.

So, I can think of no way you to do this if the hotel (stupidly) dosen't have internet access. So either your wife is SOL, you need to go to a hotel that does offer internet access or I'm wrong.

 

[Arrqh]

Trekker4747 said:
If you were setting up a network in your home, for example, you'd connect your modem to a router and the ROUTER would broadcast/recieve the signals from the computers on the netwok.

In this case, however, one computer already has an internet connection, and also has another connection to the other computer. Which is why they invented Internet Connection Sharing!

I've not ever done it on Vista, and it's been a long time since I've set it up under XP, so I can't offer any help. But... that's how you'd do it.

 

[Mallory]

Do it the old-fashioned way, go buy yourself a 20 foot ethernet cable and hardwire the connection.

 

[Gaseous Anomaly]

Mallory said:
Do it the old-fashioned way, go buy yourself a 20 foot ethernet cable and hardwire the connection.

Wouldn't you need a crossover cable for that to work?

 

[Mallory]

It's been years since I did it, but I was thinking along the lines of a peer to peer local network with a shared device (the wireless card). I don't know that I could do that again if I had to, but it seemed to work well on road trips before wireless when you had to hardwire in the motel room.

 

[little_chris]

Gaseous Anomaly said:

Mallory said:
Do it the old-fashioned way, go buy yourself a 20 foot ethernet cable and hardwire the connection.

Wouldn't you need a crossover cable for that to work?

nope... most newer network jacks can switch the connection around them selves.

 

[Alaedhros]

Mallory said:
Do it the old-fashioned way, go buy yourself a 20 foot ethernet cable and hardwire the connection.

This is not a bad idea, and it would probably only cost you $5. And as little_chris mentioned, most ports these days don't even need the special crossover cable. However, FrontLine was doing almost exactly this with his wireless card, and it didn't work. If he couldn't share the card over a wireless connection, why would a wired connection magically do the trick? I'm not saying it's not worth a shot, especially since it's only $5 for the cable, but it doesn't seem to make sense...

 

[Lindley]

^Simply because of the mechanics involved. Wireless broadcasts are so powerful immediately at the source that receivers have to be shut down for microseconds at a time when a transmission is made; so the notion of "repeating" a wireless signal in real time is tricky at best. Most home computers don't bother supporting it.

OSX Internet Sharing has a preference pane which lets you select one of the input methods---Ethernet, Airport, Modem, or Firewire---as a connection method, and "Share this connection with..." lists the supported connection types (the same list) to share the connection with. One of the few combinations that *isn't* available is Airport->Airport.

 

[Alaedhros]

Very interesting. Thanks for the info, Lindley. I guess I'd better stick a crossover cable in my backpack, just in case.

 

[Lindley]

Darn inverse-square law....

 

[Orborde]

Perhaps I misunderstand, but it seems to me that you have two separate problems here:

1. Creating a peer-to-peer "LAN" between your laptops.
2. Sharing an internet connection onto that LAN.

I assume that your Verizon card is NOT the same card as your laptop's normal Wifi card. If that is the case, you can treat the Verizon card as a modem, and use your wireless card to create a LAN. Once you have the LAN working, you can use the Internet Connection Sharing (or Vista equivalent) to share the connection onto your LAN.

So what you need to do is configure your laptop's onboard wireless card into "peer to peer" mode, and log your wife onto that network. Use ping to make sure that the local connection is up.

Once you have a local connection, it should be trivial to log onto your Verizon thinger and share that connection.

EDIT: Again, if the only network hardware your laptop has is the Verizon card, what you wish to do is impossible. You must have the Verizon card to provide the link to the internet, and the laptop's builtin network hardware (wireless or wired) to link to your wife's machine.

 

[Saturn0660]

hummmmm, if both laptops have there own built in wireless. Could you not turn them on and use Ad-hoc mode? I'm almost sure my laptop will do this built in...