Wirelesslan setup.

[VeeDubb]

Okay, I have knoppix installed to the hard drive of my desktop.

At this point, that desktop has a regular old standard universal generic network card that uses cat5 cables(that's the kind with the RJ45 plug)

At present, the only thing connected to that network card by wires, is an 802.11b wireless router.

My only means of connecting to the internet is an external 56k modem on tty0 that connects to MSN internet service with a PPP connection.

My other two system are:

1- My girlfriends WindowsXP laptop with a WiFi pc card.

2- A PocketPC (if you're not familiar with them, that is a windowsCE PDA) that has a WiFi CF card.

My goal is to allow the laptop and the pocketPC to share the internet service and and the USB printer on my desktop. File transfer would be nice, but it is not critical. I don't care about the PocketPC and laptop seeing eachother one way or the other.

At present, the PocketPC and the laptop can "see" the access point (router) and apear to conect to it, but I don't know what to do from here. Also, the laptop "sees" the router and connects to it, but says there is no signal.

[garyng]

If that is the case, you are supposed to see an 'eth0' on the KNOPPIX box but your last ifconfig didn't show that.

What you would need to do would be the following :

1. configure your wireless device to use some internal IP address like in the range of 10.0.1.x an example of setup :

KNOPPIX 10.0.1.1
ROUTER 10.0.1.2(for the wired interface)
10.0.2.1(for the wireless interface)
XP 10.0.2.2(for the wirless card)
Pocket PC 10.0.2.3

For your wireless devices, their default gateway would be set to 10.0.2.1(the router) DNS(would be those assigned by your ISP)

For the router, its default gateway woud be 10.0.1.1(your KNOPPIX box)

You also need to activate the NAT support on the KNOPPIX(don't ask me how as I don't have experience but I am sure it can be done).

It is quite complicated. I hope other would chip in about how to setup NAT etc.

[VeeDubb]

Well, you heard it folks, if there's anybody that can help me out here I'd appreciate it. If not, even a good book sugestion for a beginner would be good.

[VeeDubb]

if it helps, I jsut ran "ifconfig eth0" and these were the results.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:50:BA:5E:90:BF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0x2f00

[garyng]

What you are asking to do is way beyond a simple book can offer. I would suggest you try to google 'linux NAT ppp' and see what it comes up. A simpler(but more expensive) solution would be to buy the Orinoco RG-1000 kits(don't know if it is still available) which is a wireless router that also has a modem/ethernet connection to do exactly what you want.

Another alternative is use the XP box as the router to outside world. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to play with linux for this usage or I can give you a field report.

The following is something I found on google

http://www-jerry.oit.duke.edu/linux/...th_ppp_v62.txt

[VeeDubb]

You 've got to be kidding. The router takes care of itself, and I was under the impression that unix is what the majority of large networks and the internet were built on. Why in the name of God isn't there a simple straight foreward way to do this?!?! I mean it takes less than 3 minutes to set up internet connections sharing in Windows. That just doesn't make any sense.

Also, using the xp box as the gateway isn't realy an option because it's a laptop.

[garyng]

You are absolutely right. A lot of those routers are just a PC running specially tuned linux. But setting them up is not an easy task(I mean making linux function the way like a router), comparing with Windows.

[VeeDubb]

Oh well, I guess I'll just keep dual booting for now, though i means finding another valid copy of windows..... Maybe I'll search te sourceforge, somebody MUST be working on this......

[VeeDubb]

An intersting attempt at changing around. My only real concern is internet share. printing would be nice and file shareing is not realy a concern, but I'd take it if it came along. Anyway, I was having rouble configuring this in windows, so instead of leaving the WAN socket open, and plugging my deskto into lan1, I plugged the desktop into the WAN socket (the one reserved for your broadband modem) so now the router thinks my desktop is the internet connection. I was able to connect my PocketPC via WiFi in 2 seconds this way.

I don't know if this makes any real difference, but Ithought it might give somebody an idea. Maybe configurein my desktop as a local proxy server or something along those lines. Anyway, let me know what you think.

[garyng]

It solve half of your problem, but you still need to enable NAT on KNOPPIX so all your other devices linking through Wi-Fi can see the outside world. Proxy is an option but proxy would limit to WEB browsing only.