Alright, a little background. A while ago, my family got a tiny Windows CE laptop that doesn't seem like it's going to serve a purpose. We also recently received a desktop PC that I could actually use. The only problem is that it has no wifi card, so I would have to plug it into the router to access the Internet. But the net book does have wifi. So the question is, could I tether the two computers together so I could use the Internet on the desktop? Are there any special programs I would need?
Internet connection sharing(ICS) is supported on Windows XP(probably older too) and beyond, without the need of any external software. It's pretty straightforward using the wizard on the network tab(control panel) to configure it... Of course, the computer which is acting as "the router" with the internet connection must be powered on for the connection to be shared. Another downside is that it's not really easy to forward ports with Windows ICS from my experience, but maybe I just did it wrong. That should just be an issue for you if you ever wish to host a server(for example, a game match). Microsoft's article.
Windows CE probably does not have ICS, but you could get an ARM linux distro and try to do ICS from there.
CE does have ICS, I'm just running into more trouble now. Microsoft's article says, in Network Connections "Right click the connection you use to connect to the Internet". Yeah, well my wifi network isn't in there. Just stuff like "RT28701" and "GETCE6B1".
Yes it is. Now the problem is, going to the properties window on that, there doesn't seem to be anything useful. Just IP address stuff and name server.
If you had an Android smartphone (or Android installed on the Windows CE palmtop), you can share the Wi-Fi connection of the Android device to any computer with USB tethering. If your device's data connection is Wi-Fi and you plug in USB and activate USB tethering to the PC, it will tether to the device's Wi-Fi connection. It's a neat little trick I discovered a few months ago. It might help for you if you already have an Android smartphone or if you can get Froyo or better installed on that palmtop.
I don't know if this helps, but..... PDANet was designed to run on mobile devices to share their data connection with your desktop. As it turns out, there is a version for "Windows Mobile" Prior to WP7, "Windows Mobile" was built around a specific implementation of "Windows CE" - the operating system running your crap sub-notebook. Perhaps this could be your ticket? Sure as hell beats risking a brick while loading android. For what it's worth, I do believe that the device manufacturer has to explicitly enable the internet connection sharing module when they compiled Windows CE for your device. I'm not 100% sure exactly how it works, seeing as I've never done it, but from what I can gather, Microsoft actually provides a significant portion of Windows CE's code to device manufacturers so that they can custom-tailor Windows CE to run on whatever device they are building. Which means that unless they are designing a Windows CE - powered internet box (perhaps a "firewall" of sorts which sits between your network and the open internet), they probably won't include ICS because it's not terribly relevant to the majority of uses for their devices. Examples of uses for ICS in a Windows CE powered device would be a set-top-box for cable which can pull data off the cable line and potentially also become a high-speed gateway into the home, a cable or satellite box which includes a modem for data services also acting as a sort of dial-up gateway into the home, and in standalone gateway boxes. No, seriously, those are the three explicitly listed "implementation scenarios" on the MSDN page on ICS in Windows CE. tl;dr version: Unless the functionality was explicitly built into your device by the manufacturer, you aren't going to get it with stock Windows CE. You may have luck with PDANet, you may not. If you can find a build of Android which supports the Wifi and the ethernet, AND is built for your device, you might be able to run something like EasyTether. Whatever you do, it is most certainly going to be inferior to just getting a damned WiFi card/dongle for your new desktop.
I just realized. The desktop computer doesn't have a wifi card (unless an Intel 82566DC Gigabit Network Connection means anything), doesn't seem to have Bluetooth, and there's no sync cable with a laptop. So how was I expecting this to work in the first place? Wait, wifi dongle? What is this and where can I get it? Getting a card to integrate into the system would be preferable, but likely more expensive and harder to find.
If I were you I'd just buy a cheap Linksys router (one of those blue ones) and load DD-WRT on it. If you put it in bridge mode, you can basically have the connection go from your main wifi router to your linksys, and then you can wire things to your linksys just like any other wired router. I used to use this method when I lived in a trailer.
Well, I bought a dongle made by Realtek on Amazon around a week ago, and got it set up. I wasn't able to get a solid Internet connection, which meant I couldn't do anything. I assumed it was because my room didn't get a good connection (around 30% signal strength). It just got moved into my living room, where the signal fluctuates from 80% to 90%. I still can't do anything. I realized it was because my connection would cut out for a second around once a minute. Apparently, this is enough to ruin whatever you're doing. I don't know where the problem is. I want to say it's the adaptor, because the other computers in the house don't have this problem. But my iPod occasionally does it too, so is it a problem with the connection?
Windows Vista/7, I assume? It has this nasty habit of scanning for new networks every 60 seconds. Depending on the adapter, that can be problematic. Thankfully, it's easy to fix.
It's XP, but I did download the program (and 5 others needed to run it), only to find out what the real problem is. It seems that when the adaptor is set to Windows Zero Config mode, the connection never cuts out. I noticed this before, but disregarded it because I couldn't get online at all. I just realized that it can't connect because it isn't getting a certificate from my wifi connection. That seems to be the last problem I need to fix. So, what do I do here? EDIT: Did some research, found an article, and now I'm typing this from my PC. Everything went better than expected.
