Setting up two networks

[richardm]

I have just exceeded my networking knowledge (it didn't take long, actually)

At home I'm currently using a wireless network. I'm in the process of copying some largeish amounts of data (gigabytes of the stuff) and the wireless is struggling a bit. I do have some ordinary NICs, cables and routers from my previous network.

Is it possible to set up a wired intranet between the two PCs that I want to swap data between, while still leaving the wireless one to handle the Internet side?

I've been googling away, but it occurs to me that it might be better to ask someone who knows!

 

[Dogbreath]

You should be able to do this. You may have to bind the TCP/IP to the wireless and if you windows networking (if you are using windows machines) to the wired card. Depending on the distance you could create a network using a USB cable or firewire if you have it.

 

[jimlintott]

I'd plug it all in, fire it up and see what happens. I would expect the conflict to arise from the wireless and the wired router fighting over the same IP. If you can tell each router to assign addresses on different networks (including their own gateway IP) it should work. A regular old hub and hard addressing the NICs might work more easily.

Don't worry someone who knows a lot more than me will be along to help.

 

[joller]

Is it possible to set up a wired intranet between the two PCs that I want to swap data between, while still leaving the wireless one to handle the Internet side?

Yes, it can be done.
There's 2 ways to do that.
First:
What you need to do, goes like that:
1. setup the network with only wireless, and make sure it works, and that you can access internet without any problems. (this is the stage you're at)
2. Enable the NICs in the two PCs, but assign the IPs from a different network than the wireless one.
i.e. if the wireless network is 192.168.0.0/24
the wired network could be 192.168.1.0/24
or to avoid cunfusion the wired network could be 10.0.0.0/24, so the IPs could be 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2
3. Don't set up any gateways for the second interfaces.
Windows should handle the rest - you might need to refer to the computers by their IPs though.
When now you try to access 10.0.0.2 from 10.0.0.1, even without any additional static routes it should send the traffic directly to the 10.0.0.0/24 network through the correct (wired) interface.

give it a go.

Approach 2:
To make it easy for yourself, disable the wireless interface on one of the PCs, and enable packet forwarding (routing) on the other one.
This way if the 'wired only' PC (which needs to have the wired interface on the other one setup as the gateway) tries to access the internet, it will send the packets through the second PC.
This solution depends on the PC with routing enabled being ON all the time, since it works as a router for the other PC.

 

[richardm]

Hey, it works! Many thanks all, it was a lot more straightforward than I'd feared

Joller, I went for type 2 in the end. Who wants life to be too easy? Also, in fact it seems to have resolved the names correctly so I don't need to refer to them by IP address. Whether that's a fluke or not I don't know, but for now it's fine.

 

[joller]

Glad I could help