Interesting USB adapter / router question.

[wordzero]

I connect to a hotspot with a USB dongle. I want to connect another machine, a Wii to be exact, in another room but it can't recieve the signal from the hotspot. I was wondering if there was a way to use the wireless router I have, which only has one input and that is ethernet, to somehow extend the signal to the other room? I have no way of plugging my USB adapter into the router. Can the router plug into the ethernet port on my computer and transmit what is being received via the USB dongle? Thank you guys so much.

 

[Gustajo]

Bridging wireless connections with a pc

Short answer yes.
I currently have a DLink router in one room, a gaming bridge in another room and a USB wireless adapter in a third room. The internet connection from my cable modem service is being bridged to the usb adapter which relays all the internet to the router. The router also communicates wirelessly with the gaming bridge passing along all that traffic.

If you can connect the WII to the router/gaming bridge(one ethernet port makes it sound more like a bridge) then connect the router to your pc using the ethernet port. Finally there should be two connections under "Start>settings>network connections" (assumes windows xp). Select the two connections (holding ctrl while clicking) then right click either and select "bridge connections". That should pass all traffic from your wireless USB adapter to the ethernet adapter.

I don't have a WII but for the XBox 360 bridging was prefered to Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) as it blindly forwards all ports and eliminates the need to specify what ports are necessary for gaming.

Good Luck

 

[wordzero]

Ok, sounds great. I'm a bit confused but i'll give it a try. The Wii doesn't have a port, it's wireless so i'm not sure there. Now in the network connections, am I to bridge my lan and my usb connection? Just to clairify.

 

[Gustajo]

Okay, your pc has a USB adapter that you use to connect to a wireless hotspot. That's connection 1.
You have a wireless router, with one ethernet connection that you want to connect to a Wii.

First you have to get the Wii to connect to the wireless adapter. The ethernet cable from the adapter should be connected to your PC. (Connection 2)

With the Wii now connected to your PC (through the adapter and cable) bridging the two connections should connect your Wii to the internet.

This will only work if the hotspot is able to hand out multiple IP address to a single mac address ( from it's point of view your USB device will be requesting multiple IP address, 1 for the pc and another for the Wii) If the device won't give out additional address, you can try using ICS (internet connection sharing) which will give an IP address to the Wii and use Network Address Translation (NAT) to cross communicate between the two networks. I haven't seen a Wii so I don't know what kind of issues that might cause, but I know for Xbox live there's some port configuration that must be done to get the right traffic to pass between subnet when using ICS, and there some stuff (Media sharing to be specific) that just isn't supported with ICS.