If like me youve used ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) for the last few months/years to share your internet amongst your computers, you may have start to notice some issues with it.
For me it started when the internet would randomly stop working, my router/modem combo checked out fine, and when tracerted it showed the packets simply being redirected to a machines own ip address, thus going nowhere.
My particular setup was:
Wireless router -> Wireless card on laptop -> using ICS to share internet via crossover cable to main pc.
FInally fed up with ICS screwing up, even when manually editing routing tables and it still naffing up I decided to try another method that Id tried in the past without success.
The XP Network Bridge
Now if you have two wired networks your joining this is actually easy as a eating cake (providing its not a giant human crushing cake of death thing, or your not sat on a rollercoaster trying to eat blackforest gateau [it just doesnt work... ive tried it :|]) If you have a wired and a wireless network heres where things get a bit eeerrrggg...
Preperation[/b]
- Enable the DHCP server on your router or main server if it isnt already and enlarge the pool of addresses by at least 3 (youll need an ip for the bridge, the wireless card, and the computer interfacing to the bridge).
- Disable the ICF and ICS on any of the connections your going to bridge.
The easy bit
- Select the two network connections inside the "network connections" window of the computer you wish to turn into a network bridge. (Do this by holding down CTRL or SHIFT whilst clicking them).
- Right click the highlighted set of network connections and select "Bridge Connections".
- Wait a while.
If you notice that your wireless connection suddenly disconnects, or you cant get it to connect again then dont fear you have the same problem that I had that is explained below.
The Magical bit
Windows XP network bridging requires to be able to place your card into whats called "promiscuous mode", now as windows XP is fairly dated very very few cards actually support being shoved into this mode natively by Windows XP, they tend to go "oi!!! no!!! who the hell do you think you are! I aint putting out for every os that comes along" (then again maybe not, its been a long night and Ive drunk much caffine! :)).
However!... the magic bit is that you can force the issue, now there may be some older cards or perhaps some rather locked down wireless cards that still wont support this, but theres no harm in trying (this doesnt mean you can come to me if your card blows up in your face after doing this, at your own risk is the operative word).
Now the situation you should be in is that you have a network bridge, but its not doing anything as one side of the bridge just wont connect to anything and is seemingly broken. That side would be the wireless one.
Head to the fabled [START] button in the bottom left hand side of the screen.
Click [RUN]
Type "cmd"
then type in the following:
"netsh bridge show a" without the quotes,
You should see the two network connections taking part in the bridge with "disabled" by the side of them.
on the wireless connection you need to change it to an enabled. To do this you do a bit of magical dos wizardry! :)
type in: "netsh bridge set a 1 e" changing the number 1 to whatever number was your wireless adapter listed previously.
This should then force the cards into promiscuous mode. If it fails.. then your stuck with plain ol buggy ICS.
To check that the card is now operating in promiscuous mode type
"netsh bridge show a" again and you should see "enabled" next to your wireless adapter.
Now simply "repair" the wireless connection and providing your preparation was to turn on the DHCP server and enlarge the address pool, you should be up and running. :)
Its looking more and more like im going to using this guide to connect my Xbox to my PC then wirelessly to my router.
:S
What IP range are you using, as I always thought ICS wanted the main PC to be 192.168.0.1?
ICS doesnt care what ip range you have, when I ran ICS I used to use the wireless network on 10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.5 (had a few extra ips in there :D)and the crossover between the lappy and the tower on 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.2
Now with the bridge, im using from 10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.6 I think. This tower is now on the same subnet as the wired computers downstairs :) Could always just change it to 192.168.0.* but to be honest my router is ultimately crap and already kicks up a fuss when I change the username and pass on the thing.