sammybaddy

I've been trying to help this guy setup his PDA (using wifi sdcard) to be able to browse the web wirelessley.

He has dialup, a Netgear MR814 Wifi Router with 4 ports, and is running WinXP.

We connected his computer to port1 on router and are using the following IP Addresses:
192.168.0.1 - Router
192.168.0.2 - Computer
192.168.0.3 - PDA

We set his NIC and his SDCard to Autoget Network settings (Router reserves IP for mac addresses) and he is able to sync his pda with ActiveSync. I thought that while he was connected to activesync wirelessly he would be able to surf the net, since he says he can surf it when he connects the usb cable. This did not work.

Should this be able to work?

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Next we tried setting his dialup modem to share his internet connection. I had him enable internet sharing on his dialup modem, thinking that all we'd have to do is set the gateway and dns settings.

What we did was have his PDA use manual settings. And manually set the ip to 192.168.0.3. And manually set the gateway to 192.168.0.2.

I had him try and get the DNS settings for his ISP, so we could enter those in his PDA. Well, he said his ISP is giving him his DNS settings through DHCP, so its set to auto get. I then had him run ipconfig/all , but it did not give IP addresses for the DNS Servers. Instead it gave things that looked similar to a mac address.

Anyway, we tried pinging the PDA from the computer and it failed when we set it up like this.

I know the router has a section in there where it can set network settings to use, but that is for cable/dsl. I was thinking that maybe I could plug in his computer into the "internet port" of the router and make these settings, but not sure if this would even work.

Any tips on how to get this working?

Or would you advise him to just return the router/nic and buy a PCI wificard and run this network thing ad-hoc?

fremen

Well I'm not too sure about the wireless ActiveSync being able to surf the net, but if you think about it, not likely, so no.

If you can return the router I would, sounds kinda useless if it's just one computer and a PDA with no broadband to use it on.

But if that requires too much effort, I would suggest you turn off the DHCP server on the router and make it acquire one from the computer. The computer will do that once the internet connection sharing is enabled.

Ah yeah hope I haven't forgotten anything there...or stuffed up for that matter, but if you do get that PCI card just the same thing again really.

sammybaddy

So, make the computer have a static IP, disable the DHCP on the router, and make WinXP act as a DHCP server (I guess there should be an option for that) and the PDA will know to get an IP from the WinXP computer.

Hmm. Sounds like it'd work. Will give it a try tomorrow.

Will let ya know what happens.

fremen

When you enable Internet Connection Sharing on XP it basically acts as the DHCP server then. And yeah in theory the PDA should then be able to get an IP from the computer. Best of luck with it.

sammybaddy

Setting PDA to Autoget from WinXP didnt seem to work. Oh well. Will fiddle around some more.

fremen

Ok, next attempt.

Ok make sure that the router doesn't have DHCP server enabled as I said before and make sure the Internet Connection Sharing is enabled on the computer. Now if the PDA isn't getting an IP from the computer as you say we'll have to set it manually. Set it to say 192.168.0.3 as it was before with the gateway being 192.168.0.1 (the computer) and the DNS also set to 192.168.0.1.

Now if you can ping it on the network correctly and what not but still can't view any web sites then yeah the DNS server will have to be changed to what the computer is using for its. (Didn't do this in the first place because I remember reading somewhere to make the DNS the address of the ICS host.)

If the router isn’t getting an IP address either, set that manually too. Ok hopefully that'll be of some use to you this time. :)

-Edit-
Just remembered you couldn't get the DNS addresses, double click on the connection icon in the tray when the dial up is connected, then go to the Details tab and it should be in there somewhere with any luck.