Ad-hoc Wireless Network Problem

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Hi all,

I have a wireless-enabled laptop and want to connect to the Internet wirelessly while at home for the weekend.

I bought a Belkin 802.11g Wireless PCI Card for my home computer to create an ad-hoc wireless network to share my Internet connection with the laptop. I have followed all the instructions, tried using the Belkin Wireless Utility and the Windows "Zero-Config" one, but the PCI card cannot seem to detect ANY networks in the vicinity, let alone it's own ad-hoc one.

The laptop can detect the network, takes a while to connect, but after it's connected, the PC's wireless connection is still showing Disconnected.

Does anyone have suggestions as to what I should do (other than buy a wireless router)?

Thanks,
zerop.
 
zerop said:
Hi all,

I have a wireless-enabled laptop and want to connect to the Internet wirelessly while at home for the weekend.

I bought a Belkin 802.11g Wireless PCI Card for my home computer to create an ad-hoc wireless network to share my Internet connection with the laptop. I have followed all the instructions, tried using the Belkin Wireless Utility and the Windows "Zero-Config" one, but the PCI card cannot seem to detect ANY networks in the vicinity, let alone it's own ad-hoc one.

The laptop can detect the network, takes a while to connect, but after it's connected, the PC's wireless connection is still showing Disconnected.

Does anyone have suggestions as to what I should do (other than buy a wireless router)?

Thanks,
zerop.


After reading your post, i ran a simulation on my 2 wifi laptops, I got both of them to connect to an adhoc network, however I did use an open connection with no security level set, whilst not preferred due to the security risk, doing this is a good way to start, once you have it up then you can mess with adding security.

To acheive this I removed all existing settings related to the WIFI cards in WZC then added a new network into windows without any security, it took XP pro about 20 seconds to connect , XP Home took a little longer.

Once connected I was able to browse without any problems from laptop to laptop.


Firstly remember ad-hoc means unit to unit without an actual network being in place, Windows will assign an IP address in the 169.x.x,x range,

However you cant expect to get an internet connection just because you have managed to get connected to a machine that has an internet connection, to do this you will need to enable Internet connection sharing on the desktop PC,

However the use of ICS requires 2 network cards, one that accepts the incoming internet feed and the second to distibute that feed out.


If anyone has a link on how to setup ICS via a wifi and cabled PC i'd like to see it, if not i'll try it later and see how it works....

Regards
 
Thanks very much for the speedy reply!

I started with a completely fresh config on the PC, which seems to be where the problem exists. I add the network using WZC, no security etc., but the network never shows up on the Available Networks list. I also attempted this using the Belkin Wireless Utility, but to no avail.
 
zerop said:
Thanks very much for the speedy reply!

I started with a completely fresh config on the PC, which seems to be where the problem exists. I add the network using WZC, no security etc., but the network never shows up on the Available Networks list. I also attempted this using the Belkin Wireless Utility, but to no avail.


Ok I used the WZC (which is a pile of shi**) on the XP home and the 3com software on the XP PRO, I never thought to see if on the home version it showed up as an available network, I'll retry it shortly and post back, this time i'll use the WZC on both laptops.

Regards


Back again

So I tried WZC on both laptops and I had no luck whatsover getting a connection, I could finally get the test network to appear but couldnt get them to connect to each other, I played with all the various settings in WZC that I could find, in the end I gave up,

But like I said using the 3Com software on the pro and the WZC on the home i managed it, so I assume that WZC is the cause somewhere, so I throw this open for another poster to have a go at it......

Regards
 
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