ICS with a wireless router

[Justan]

Thanks for the link to the ICS tutorial. I have a similar problem compared to the original poster but the ICS tutorial doesn’t quite answer the question I have. Well, maybe it does but I just don’t get it. Anyway here’s the goal I'm after:

I have a friend who lives in a cabin in the woods. Their only avenue for broadband available is an installed Verizon USB720. They have the USB720 connected to their computer by way of a USB cable. They also have an Ethernet network card on the computer which is currently unused.

The goal is to connect the computer to a wireless router, and then let others access the Verizon network by way of the wireless router. Can this be done? Is there a model that demonstrates how to configure this?

Thanks in advance for any feedback or guidance!!

[johnwill]

Note that you should really start your own thread for a new issue.

Yep, since the computer running ICS will appear to the outside world as a router, you can use a wireless router in the following configuration to connect wirelessly or wired to the ICS machine.

Connecting two (or more) SOHO broadband routers together.

Configure the IP address of the secondary router(s) to be in the same subnet as the primary router, but out of the range of the DHCP server in the primary router. For instance DHCP server addresses 192.168.0.2 through 192.168.0.100, I'd assign the secondary router 192.168.0.254 as it's IP address, 192.168.0.253 for another router, etc.

Note: Do this first, as you will have to reboot the computer to connect to the router again for the remaining changes.

Disable the DHCP server in the secondary router.

Setup the wireless section just the way you would if it was the primary router, channels, encryption, etc.

Connect from the primary router's LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the secondary router. If there is no uplink port and neither of the routers have auto-sensing ports, use a cross-over cable. Leave the WAN port unconnected!

This procedure bypasses the routing function (NAT layer) and configures the router as a switch (or wireless access point for wireless routers).

[Justan]

Thanks very much for this excellent guide!

It brings up a number of questions.

First, for the sake of the conversation, it sounds as if USB720 is in effect invisible. The 2nd router is really the machine running ICS. Is that correct?

Next, and I didn’t look but do you know off hand the dhcp address scope provided by ICS?

Third, rather than disabling dhcp on our added router (the wireless router), could I set it on a different subnet, so that it would be able to perform dhcp yet still foreword everything to the machine running ICS. I'm asking as I don’t understand how dhcp would propagate from our ICS computer through the 2nd router.

Hope this makes sense?

[johnwill]

Yes, ICS is a NAT layer just like a router.

You will have two NAT layers if you connect the router as you suggest. If you look at what I suggest, you'll see that I'm not using the routing functions, it's really just a wireless access point, and the DHCP requests are passed transparently to the ICS machine.

Trust me, it works.

[jeepguync]

can you do this with only 1 router? i just want to get my wii online lol

[johnwill]

jeepguync, please start your own thread if you have an issue to discuss.

[Justan]

Hi,

I wanted to extend a belated but sincere THANK YOU for your feedback and guidance. It worked perfectly. You've helped to bring happiness to many lives