Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations John Tel on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

LAN at home? PC and laptop on cable 1

Status
Not open for further replies.

AlaskanDad

Programmer
Mar 1, 2002
188
US
I've currently got my PC hooked up to a cable modem and would like to be able to use the modem for my laptop as well.

The laptop is an IBM thinkpad with all the bells and whistles (it's from work).

Would an ethernet cable junction box be all I need?

Oh, and I'd love it if I could use the laptop in the next room. Would I have to run extra cable?
 
You would need a dsl/cable router which has everything you need built in for cat5 cabling.
You could take one cat5 output from there to a wireless access point and with a wireless card in the laptop have a wireless lan. Or run the cable. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.
 
you could also get a x-over cable and use some kind of software to run the connection thru ur PC to your laptop. If it has all bells and whistles try bluetooth/WAN.

edfairs suggestion is equally good. T3/\/\p()
tek-tips UK branch!
_________________
 
How much will a bluetooth/WAN run me? I've got the card space but don't have a wireless card.

Wireless sounds intriguing to me. Tell me more!!!!
 
I did exactly what you want to do. I had a laptop that I plugged into my home network. I used an SMC Barricade router (model 7004ABR - I don't need it anymore, want to buy it? kidding.)

Here's how it worked:

Connect PC to router
Connect laptop to router (yes, run cables, unless you want a wireless router but then you need wireless NICs for each computer and deal with the wireless security issues).
Connect router to modem
Setup router software generally by opening IE and typing in the address bar (you'll need to read the manual for the router at this point)

I used 1 NIC in my laptop to use both networks. However, to do this, you need to setup your home network to be like your work network. In other words, setup your home computer to use the same Workgroup name as at work. Otherwise, you need to change the workgroup name on your laptop depending on where you are (maybe someone knows a better way?).

Good luck.

p.s. I did all this a year ago and my memory may be fuzzy. Be nice if my instructions are wrong/incomplete [bigears]
 
Great!

Can you give me an idea of the costs I could be looking at? This is for a home business so it'll be a write-off!
 
In that case, it won't cost very much!

You can probably get a decent router for ~$50 (US) and the cabling would be ~$15 (US) or less.

I use an ADSL modem which requires software in my PC to work. I'm not sure if your cable modem uses software to connect but you will need to uninstall or disable it since the router will handle the connection instead of your PC.
 
Cool thanks for the help!

Now I just gotta figure out where and when to buy these things...
 
I'm in Wisconsin now. My oldest was born in Fairbanks, so...

The dogsleds came very regularly, though?
 
Look for deals at places like
They sell lots of networking gear and sometimes have free shipping lately.

Might try
I think they sell a lot of stuff from D-Link, Belkin, and other networking companies like SMC and Nexland. They have been selling and advertising Belkin 4 port Routers for 49.99. I think they come with an additional $20.00 rebate making it a $29.99 deal.

Check Best-buy Office Max and similar stores for retail.

Look for the options on the routers like DMZ, Port Forwarding, VPN, Telephony, etc. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
Circuit City has been running specials on Siemens Speedstream routers and NIC cards. You can get them pretty cheap if you want to fool with rebates. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing....." [idea]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top