Wireless Router and 3G?

A

Airmatix

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Okay, I have a D-Link 604+ Wireless ADSL router which I used when I lived in the UK (where I had a 1Mb SDSL line for 22 quid a month!). However, since returning to SA about a year ago, I've only used it as a standard router for a small home network - mainly for printing and file transfer.

BUT, I recently bought a Sony PSP, which has wireless capability built-in, as well as an Internet browser (on the latest Firmware). AND you can play online agains anybody in the world (with a PSP and a wireless Internet connection) if you use a gateway on the net.

So, now I'd like to know if there is a way to turn my ADSL router, which isn't connected to an ADSL line, into a wireless Internet access point, using the 3G card in one of the computers attached to the network.

Can it be as simple as setting the Default Gateway to the IP of the machine with the 3G card? Or is there more to it than that?

I'm a long way from an expert when it comes to networking (as you can probably see from my question), BUT I'm not completely daft when it comes to computers in general. Any help, however, would be appreciated!
 
Airmatix said:
Can it be as simple as setting the Default Gateway to the IP of the machine with the 3G card? Or is there more to it than that?
Click to expand...
In theory it should be as easy as that, but as I have noticed with my Wireless setup, and changing things there, there is normally some snag somewhere along the line.

Give it a try, and let us know ... then I'll see you online for some PSP action :cool:
 
Okay, so I tried it - and its not that simple. Problem is, I don't know enough about it to tell why it isn't working.

I set the Default Gateway on the router to the IP of the PC with the 3G card. Then I checked the network settings on all the machines attached to the network, and made sure that they were pointing in the right direction. BUT no dice. Oh well, it was nice to play!
 
Last edited:
"wireless router"

Also busy trying to do this thing at the moment. Busy downloading some router software off the internet. worth a try. my other problem is my psp, setting the ip address i try set up manualy and keeps going back to automatic. any ideas ?
 
Have never tried this, so I'm probably wrong, but I think (if you haven't done so already) you need to activate Internet Conncection Sharing on the computer with 3G.
 
Speaking of 3G Wireless Routers ... when will Vodacom be realeasing the one I've heard so much about????
 
Airmatix said:
Okay, so I tried it - and its not that simple. Problem is, I don't know enough about it to tell why it isn't working.

I set the Default Gateway on the router to the IP of the PC with the 3G card. Then I checked the network settings on all the machines attached to the network, and made sure that they were pointing in the right direction. BUT no dice. Oh well, it was nice to play!
Click to expand...

Ok, ICS must be activated on the machine with the 3G card in. When you say 'pointing in the right direction', what do you mean? The other wireless devices must still use the router as gateway, and the router in turn will use the machine with the 3G card and ICS activated as the 'official' gateway to the internet.

Make sense?
 
web said:
Also busy trying to do this thing at the moment. Busy downloading some router software off the internet. worth a try. my other problem is my psp, setting the ip address i try set up manualy and keeps going back to automatic. any ideas ?
Click to expand...
Just a question, is there any specific reason you want to assign IP's manually? I have found that (probably because I run multiple Wireless APs/routers at different locations) keeping the devices to receive IP's via DHCP makes your life much easier
 
IP address

Just got psp thingy, was playing at work cause its raining outside so thought would try connect through works network. problem is when use automatic settings on psp it gets stuck when trying to obtain ip address from access point.
and when i enter the ip address manually it keeps going back to automatic. dont want to fiddle with network at work because then they would know i "knew" things about pc's and everytime there is a problem they would get me to fix it.

Which would put some poor sod out of work. Only do that when my shares come through!
:D
 
Hi
Its as easy as disabling the "external" interface on the router (the one normally marked "internet" or "ADSL line". The internal four ports and WiFi all route on the same local subnet, so no config changes are necessary on the device. Just make sure that the PCs have the "3g" router set as their default gateway. You can do this manually or via DHCP. Also, if your router supports it, you may be able to set your default route on it to the 3G router (PC). check for route 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 interface in the config... This way the router will take care of the new route for you and you wont have to change anything.
Hope this helps...
Cheers
ScrnScrm
 
Thanks all for the replies - much appreciated.

ScrnScrm's solution worked to a certain degree. As in, I can now access the Internet from all my computers on the network, but my PSP - even though is "sees" the network - won't connect to it. But that's a question for another forum.

By the way, ScrnScrm, the biggest problem for me was disabling the "external" interface. It seems D-Link assumes (correctly) that if you buy a DSL router, you will have a DSL line connected to it. So it took quite a bit of fiddling to convince it that I REALLY don't have a DSL connected. Thankfully the device has a factory reset switch, because I'll NEVER be able to undo what I've just done!
 
ICS with WiFi at home

I do what you are talking about -- use a Linksys WiFi router and then have the
other machines at home connect to the Internet through the GPRS connection
on my phone.

I'm running Linux on my laptop, though, and I assigned static IPs for the WiFi
machines.

I have done this the other way round, using WinXP ICS to share a dialup
modem...and ICS is a pain. The problems you have had/will have are

- you can't use static IPs with ICS. It will only do masquerading for IPs that
its internal DHCP server has handed out.
- so, you have to turn the DHCP server in your WiFi router off, then set
up an I/F on your gateway box as shared. That I/F will become
192.168.0.1 and will act as a DHCP server.

...I don't like it because you can only have one ICS gateway on a network,
and it will fight with any other DHCP servers (and most WiFi routers don't
let you configure another machine on the network as the default G/W).

With my home setup, I did something like

- setup bind as a forwarding/caching nameserver (to save as many
DNS lookups as possible)
- bring up WiFi with a static IP on my laptop
- restart bind (else it ignores queries on the new interface!)
- iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.1.0/24 -j MASQUERADE


...and set the other boxes to use my laptop as default G/W and DNS.
 
I did this using Linux, I set up Slackware on a Asus Pundit (It has a built-in PCMCIA Slot), Added a static route and stuck it into the wan port of a Asus WL500g and simply set it up as a Static IP Internet Connection.

You could do this with any pc and router.
 
"you can't use static IPs with ICS" - yes you can. :)

Here's how.

The trick is to disconnect the LAN interface in the Machine you will be running ICS on.

so for this thread....

[Vodafone 3G Card ] --> PCMCIA --> [PC] --> Ethernet --> Dlink Wlan Router
/
\
Wireless
/
\
Sony PSP

So, physically disconnect the LAN cable from the Ethernet Port on your PC.
Enable Internet Connection Sharing on the 3G Connection.
Make sure none of the device's on network are using 192.168.0.1.
Once ICS is finished and you have clicked apply. Reconnect the Ethernet cable. (This gets around the "There are static IP's on the network").

Disable Windows Firewall on the LAN interface, leave it on the 3G connection
(DON'T completely disable Windows Firewall).

All you devices, Ala PSP, laptop, etc must have a default gateway set to 192.168.0.1, and must have two DNS servers set on their WLAN interfaces.
DNS is very important. In this case you'd use Vodacom's DNS servers.

You could also install squid for Windows on the Windows PC and set it up (It's piss), that way you can save some bandwidth.

This has worked for me many times, I was using it this weekend, with Static IP's. As long as the gateway is set correctly on your PC / PSP and you have DNS servers, you can use any IP in this range : 192.168.0.2 - 192.168.0.254

Disable any firewalls on your Dlink Router as well.

For a better firewall solution, you could install Sygate personal firewall on the PC with 3G card, and add rules to allow PC's on Local net to connect.
Zone Alarm Personal doesn't support ICS so don't use that. The Pro Version does.

Okay thats my rambling done.
 
Wow! Like a charm! And quick to set up too. Now at least my 3G connection is shared, and all the traffic gets measured through the DU Meter on my laptop. I'm still having some issues with the PSP's network settings though. I've downloaded the latest firmware (v2.0) for the device, which includes an Internet browser. So far, however, I haven't had much luck - changed the network on the PSP from Ad Hoc to Infrastructure, etc. Will keep trying though!
 
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