Home wired+wireless network configuration advice needed
Hi,
I would appreciate if somebody could give me some help with the
following network setup problem:
I used to have a very simple home network setup.
All computers plus the DSL router were connected to a single
ethernet switch and were sharing the same subnet.
Each PC had the DSL router as the default gateway, and
each could talk to all other PC, but most importantly to
my fileserver that had some directories exported both through
nfs and samba.
Then I bought a notebook and things got a bit complicated.
The notebook has a built in 100MBit ethernet card, and I also
have a PCMCIA wireless network card (Orinoco Gold). The later
will connect to the network via an access point connected to
the same switch.
Now, what I would like to achieve is pretty simple:
I would like to be able to use either of the two NICs in the notebook
to access the same network.
This mainly because the wireless NICs seem unbearably slow compared
to the 100MBit line when browsing files on the fileserver. e.g.
opening simple pictures can take several seconds etc.
So I thought that I would prefer to use the built in NIC whenever
I am at my desk, where I have a fixed cable I can plug into it.
And use the wireless card whenever I'm somewhere else.
Ideally, I would like to do this without constantly reconfiguring
network interfaces, and if possible without needing to unplug the
PCMCIA card whenever I want to use the other NIC.
I'm certainly no networking expert but I believe I have some basic
understanding about TCP/IP. However I completely lack any experience
in routing and having multiple network interfaces in the same PC.
I've read a bunch of HOWTOs, but I couldn't deduce from them the
best way to proceed...
My first thought was to simply assign two differnt IP addresses
from the same subnet to each of the interfaces. e.g. 192.168.1.10
and 192.168.1.11 However, some people claimed that this is not
possible. (I have a dual boot setup to Windows XP, and XP does not
seem to have a problem with this. Allthough based on the above advise
I usually have only one of the NICs up at any given time, but
I also tried having both and XP didn't complain...)
So if the above is indeed not possible, then I guess I would need
to have either a simple way to switch between the two interfaces,
or I need to configure both NICs to be on a different subnet.
However then there is the issue on how do I access the same Internet
gateway and the same fileserver with both cards?
I guess I would need to add another NIC to one of the other machines,
configure it to be on the second subnet, and then set up some kind
of routing or bridging between the two networks...
Again, I'm not an expert but this seems awfully complicated for such
a simple task. Also this way the network access through that subnet
will depend on the other machine being up and running. Allthough this
is probably not a big problem as the file server is right below my desk
and it is on all the time, but it is still another dependency.
Are there any better solutions?
If not, how would I set up routing between the two subnets?
Should I simply set the default gateway of the second NIC on the
routing machine to be the IP address of the first NIC?
Could I somehow set the metric values of the interfaces somehow,
so that whenever it is up the 100MBit indirect route will be prefered
even though the wireless NIC is directly connected to the other subnet?
Finally for reference, here is my current network setup and what I was
about to do unless someone has a better solution:
Stuff connected to my switch:
- DSL Internet router at 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
- Fileserver at 192.168.1.2 same netmask, gw 192.168.1.1
- Wireless access point at 192.168.1.3 gw 192.168.1.1
- My wife's PC at 192.168.1.4 gw 192.168.1.1
- Notebook either through:
- 100 Mbit 192.168.1.5 gw 192.168.1.1 or
- wireless (under XP) 192.168.1.6 gw 192.168.1.6
usually only one of the is active
What I thought abit doing:
- wireless card on notebook permanently configured as 192.168.1.5
- add NIC to fileserver with 192.168.2.1 gw 192.168.1.2 (!?)
- 100MBit on notebook configured as 192.168.2.2
Questions:
- Is there a better way?
- Would this work?
- Can I connect to shared stuff on other computers (192.168.1. subnet)
through the 192.168.2.2 interface?
- Can I make it prefer the 192.168.2.2->192.168.1.2->192.168.1.X route
instead of the direct but slower 192.168.1.5->192.168.1.X route?
Many, many thanks in advance for any help!!!
regards,
Balazs
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