Win XP networking issues | Tech Off

To my knowledgeable colleagues at CP:

I have Win XP set up on my laptop (obviously). I have one wireless network card connecting to my dad's router then off to the internet. I plug it in to a docking station with a 10/100 ethernet card then into my router. I would like to be able to see the other computers on my network and use the internet from the laptop at the same time. I don't care if the two desktops on my network can use the internet, I would just like to be able to share files/printers between them.

What happens now, is I can do one or the other. If I disable the ethernet card, I can use the internet. If I enable the etherent card, I can see my network. However, when I try to use the internet with the ethernet card enabled, all internet traffic goes to the ethernet card and quickly fizzles into the void.

Is there a way where I can use the wireless card for internet access and the ethernet card for lan access and not have them get confused?

Thanks,
-- Steel

reillytm

It's probably a routing issue. What are the IP settings for each network? What is your default gateway set to? (You can only have one).

figuerres

steel300 wrote:

To my knowledgeable colleagues at CP:

I have Win XP set up on my laptop (obviously). I have one wireless network card connecting to my dad's router then off to the internet. I plug it in to a docking station with a 10/100 ethernet card then into my router. I would like to be able to see the other computers on my network and use the internet from the laptop at the same time. I don't care if the two desktops on my network can use the internet, I would just like to be able to share files/printers between them.

What happens now, is I can do one or the other. If I disable the ethernet card, I can use the internet. If I enable the etherent card, I can see my network. However, when I try to use the internet with the ethernet card enabled, all internet traffic goes to the ethernet card and quickly fizzles into the void.

Is there a way where I can use the wireless card for internet access and the ethernet card for lan access and not have them get confused?

Thanks,
-- Steel

Please clarify the setup you have.

in one spot you talk about "your dad's router"
in another you speak of "your router"

and if you have 2 routers then how do they connect?

are they "routers" or do you mean 1 router and one hub perhaps??

do you each get an IP from your provider or do you have local IP settings from your routers?

is it a firewall / wireless gateway or is it a cablemodem with an ethernet port??

depending on what you really have the problems maybe totaly different:

1 Public IP
2 Public IP's

1 firewall
2 firewalls

1 connection to the isp via 1 firewall or
2 connections to the isp via 2 firewalls
and so on....

steel300

Sure, let me clarify.

My dad has a netgear wireless router in the basement. I connect to it wirelessly with dhcp assigned ip addresses, gateways, and dns servers. The internet port on his router connects to a motorola surf board 4200 cable modem which gets an ip, gateway, and dns servers from my ISP.

In my room on the second floor I have a linksys wrt54g wireless router with a four port switch. The ethernet card I have on my laptop plugs into the switch side of my router. The internet side of my router isn't hooked into anything. So any internet connections through it promptly time out (as they should). The ethernet card gets an ip address from my linksys router. It also provides a default gateway (which just so happens to be the router's IP address).

The two networks are completely seperate, and I would like them to say that way. The problem arises when I have my ethernet card enabled. I can see the other computers on my network (the one in my room), however all internet traffic is sent through the same connection and the wireless connection is basically ignored. The wireless connection is used for dns lookups though. I think it may be right that I have two default gateways selected. I will tinker around with those some more to see what I can dig up.

Thanks for the help,
-- Steel

Maurits

Can you do a
netstat -r
command and post the output?

steel300

Maurits wrote:

Can you do a
netstat -r
command and post the output?

Of course:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>netstat -r

Route Table
===========================================================================
Interface List
0x1 ........................... MS TCP Loopback interface
0x2 ...00 20 a6 4f 63 4e ...... ORiNOCO 802.11bg ComboCard Gold - Packet Schedul
er Miniport
0x20004 ...00 c0 4f f8 63 3a ...... 3Com 3C905TX-based Ethernet Adapter (Generic
) - Packet Scheduler Miniport
===========================================================================
===========================================================================
Active Routes:
Network Destination        Netmask          Gateway       Interface Metric
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.168.1.1     192.168.1.3       25
          0.0.0.0          0.0.0.0      192.169.1.1   192.169.1.101       20
        127.0.0.0        255.0.0.0        127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1       1
      192.168.1.0    255.255.255.0      192.168.1.3     192.168.1.3       25
      192.168.1.3 255.255.255.255        127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1       25
    192.168.1.255 255.255.255.255      192.168.1.3     192.168.1.3       25
      192.169.1.0    255.255.255.0    192.169.1.101   192.169.1.101       20
    192.169.1.101 255.255.255.255        127.0.0.1       127.0.0.1       20
    192.169.1.255 255.255.255.255    192.169.1.101   192.169.1.101       20
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0      192.168.1.3     192.168.1.3       25
        224.0.0.0        240.0.0.0    192.169.1.101   192.169.1.101       20
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255      192.168.1.3     192.168.1.3       1
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.255    192.169.1.101   192.169.1.101       1
Default Gateway:       192.169.1.1
===========================================================================
Persistent Routes:
None

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

Maurits

It looks like it's picking up the default gateway from your wired network - that is, 192.169.1.1

The ideal solution would be to configure the linksys wrt54g wireless router to not specify a default gateway for DHCP clients. Not sure if you can do that with that model.

Other solutions...
Configure your ethernet card to use static IP addressing rather than asking the linksys wireless router. Don't specify a default gateway.
OR
Try going into the TCP/IP properties bound to your ethernet card and removing the gateway - not sure if "lack of a gateway" is something you can specify here but it's worth a shot
OR
Increase the interface metric on the wired connection (in TCP/IP properties advanced) to something greater than 25 - say, 30
OR
Add a static route with the "route" command - see
route -?
for details
For you probably
route -p ADD 0.0.0.0 MASK 0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 METRIC 10 IF 2

steel300

I ended going with the increased interface metric, though I'm still searching for a way to disable the gateway provided by the dhcp server. For now it will work.

Many Thanks
-- Steel


		&nbs