WinXP, LinkSys Router, 2 NIC cards, Network Bridge

[rjkrash]

I just spent two days figuring this out and thought someone else might find the solution helpful.

I wanted to have an 802.11b (wireless) segment of a lan connect to/thru a WinXP Pro computer to the DLS connection that is enabled thru a Linksys router/hub. I also wanted the wireless segment to "see" the rest of the network's (other computers) shared resources.

The config is as follows:

Win XP Pro with a NIC card connected to a Linksys BEFSR41 DSL router/hub, which in turn connects to a DSL connection (router) and other ethernet machines thru the 'hub' component of the LINKSYS. . There is also a Cisco Wireless 340 PCI card in the Win XP machine.
A second machine is a Win 98 SE machine with a Cisco Wireless 340 PCMCIA card installed.
Both 340 cards are set up as "ad-hoc".
1 more machine is connected to the Ethernet hub thru an 802.3 NIC.
I have disabled DHCP on the LinkSys router and have set all the NICs and Wireless devices with static IP address in the 192.168.1.n range, subnet 255.255.255.0.

Just a simple home network right!

The way to configure this to work is to setup a Network Bridge between the NIC card and the Wireless card. See "Network Connections" on Win XP.

The "trick" is to make the Network Bridge a part of the same network subnet as the rest of the NIC cards, routers, and wireless equipment in the network. Microsoft sets the 169.254.n.n subnet for the bridge by default. All I had to do (after much head scraching X-) ! ) was set the Network Bridge's TCP/IP properties to a network address in the same subnet as the rest of my equipment. (Rt click Network Bridge, select properties, select "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" and click properties, then select the "Use the following IP address" button and enter an available IP address in your subnet along with the proper subnet mask and default gateway.)

I hope this helps someone else!

 

[Guest_imported]

I am a gamer....any clue as to how I can open the ports needed to access my internet games?

 

[rjkrash]

Are you talking about how to open the ports on the Linksys?
If so the linksys BEFSR41 has an html interface for administration.

To use the interface point your browser to 192.168.1.1 and login.

blank user name, "admin" password (these are the defaults)

select the Advanced tab
select the Forwarding tab
set the Service Port Range (what ever port the game uses) e.g 6698 ~ 6699 for napster for the ip address of the machine you want to game from.
Note: for Forwarding to work DHCP must be disabled. You will have to assign ip addresses to each card on the network, not a big deal if its a small network. I use the range 192.168.1.10 to .14 for the four computers/nics on my network.

Thats it.

BTW on the main page (when you first log in to the router) there is a help tab. click it and you will find a pretty good help system. Click on Forwarding for info about this topic. More info can be found at

http://www.linksys.com.

Hope this helps, Good luck. The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.