Is this possible?

[lance70]

Hi, my wife and I would like to set up a wireless network in our house, I'm not sure if what we want to do is possible or not? I appreciate any help.
We have two laptops with built in wireless, one desktop with no wireless and it uses a sprint air card for internet connection, and I have one wired printer going to the desktop and we just bought one wireless printer.
My question is what do I need to connect the two laptops to both the wireless printer and the other printer connected to the desktop, and is it possible to keep the air card plugged into the desktop and have the two laptops somehow pick up this connection in the house? I know on the printer for the desktop it's an HP office jet and has the cat 5 connection in back available, I just have no clue on what to buy or if this would even be possible? Thank you very much.

 

[CiscoGuy33]

Lance,

It will help to know what Operating Systems are running on everything and the speed of the desktop computer since everything would be going through that!

I would think speaking very generally right now that you could setup Windows Internet Connection Sharing in the desk top, I would think you will need a NIC for the desk top and a wireless router like a Linksys. I think this should work, if not others will be sure to add

You turn on Internet Connection Sharing on the desktop, you run a cable from the new NIC in the desktop to the LAN port on the Linksys Wireless Router.

The Linksys wireless router should do DHCP and send out an IP addresses to the desk top, the 2 lap tops and the wireless printer, they will be like 192.168.1.100, 192.168.1.101, 192.168.1.102 and 192.168.1.103, you could even add another network cable and attach the HP printer to a LAN port as a network printer.

With Internet connection Sharing, it should allow you to make a disk that will help you setup the laptops to point to the desktop as the Internet connection since everything is connected to the same switch on the wireless router.

This will take a few more questions but it should work.

It would be better if the Sprint thing could attach to the WAN port on the router, then you would not need to worry about Internet Connection Sharing, the router would connect to sprint and get the infomation needed and pass that to the computers and printers connected by wire and by wireless.

Hope this helps and good luck!

E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +