[StevenYoungMin]

Its been a long time since I've posted but you've never let me down in the past.

My father in law connects to the internet by a dialup modem on his XP desktop. This is shared by a crossedover network cable with an XP laptop.

Now for his birthday I wanted to make the laptop wireless, I couldn't get hold of a wireless access point so I got him a wireless router (netgear wgt624) instead and a PC wireless card for the laptop.

Now I'm not sure how to connect things up.....

I have read that "to use the wireless router as an access point you need to connect via the LAN ports to the router and disable DHCP and reset the IP address of the router. Then with the desktop connected to the LAN port (rather than the WAN port which should be left unconnected) you configure the router and simply plug the card in the laptop and away you go". This description was from sites suggesting that there would be an existing router on the network which should continue to be used as a dhcp server and that no network should have two dhcp server.

My query is that since there is at present no other router or DHCP server on the network(though I don't know how the laptop gets an IP address) could I simply plug a standard ethernet cable from the desktop into the WAN port of the wireless router?

Also if I follow the guidance above, since there is no DHCP server on the network as far as I know, would it all still work as it is, with the laptop selecting its IP address automatically?

Can someone explain what I should do?

Thanks for your time and interest.

Steven

 

[coulterp]

My query is that since there is at present no other router or DHCP server on the network(though I don't know how the laptop gets an IP address) could I simply plug a standard ethernet cable from the desktop into the WAN port of the wireless router?

And use that configure to share out the dial-up connection? No.

Also if I follow the guidance above, since there is no DHCP server on the network as far as I know, would it all still work as it is, with the laptop selecting its IP address automatically?

You can share the dial-up connection using Windows in-build ICS (internet Connection Sharing) software. ICS is a DHCP server. Your wireless router connected up as an access point as you described will work with that. Type ICS into the XP Help pages for guidance.

 

[StevenYoungMin]

Thanks coulterp...

Just the reassurance I needed I shall go ahead and instruct my father in-law to set things up as I described.

Interesting that ICS acts as the DHCP server.

I will post again if I have any further problems.

Thanks

Steven