I would like to be able to share a wireless connection in a hotel room between two laptops. The laptops can be connected wireless or wired. I do not want to mess with ICS.
I found these two products which can create a wireless connection for the laptops: LINKSYS WTR54GS travel router Apple AirPort Express
Are there any other options available for connecting the laptops wireless and what kind of devices will I need if I want to hook the laptops up with ethernet cable to the wireless connection on the hotel? I would think there is some kind of wireless to wired converter available out there? (Wireless is preferred though)
In addition to this I got in my home a computer in an area with weak signals from my wireless network. If any of the solutions for the above, could be used in my home, when I'm not traveling, to get stronger signals to this computer or connect it with cable, then it would be the perfect solution.
It's not what you asked for but it is simpler and requires nothing special.
Just download MacMakeUp freeware for Windows and set BOTH PCs to the SAME MAC address.
formatting link
Then, hook to the hotel wireless with one laptop.
When you want to switch to the other laptop, just disable the wireless connection on the first laptop and enable the wireless connection on the second laptop.
The network can't tell the difference so both work - just not at the same time.
IMHO, I don't think bad anything will happen if both are on the connection at the same time but I never tried it because I'm a scaredy cat.
Jeff Liebermann would know this better than me but one thing I suggest is Network Crumbler (basically a hacked network stumbler that allows both netstumbler and wireless zero to work at the same time).
Netcrumbler will show you the signal strength of all the local hidden wireless networks. For example, in my neighborhood, there are dozens of access points, and netcrumbler orders them from weak to strong, allowing me to choose unused channels and ssids.
So how do they share the hotel wireless to two laptops with that?
Get a wireless router that has Client Mode and can share it via it's
4-port LAN switch. And if you add an Access Point (or another wireless router) you can share it wireless as well. This can be done with after-market firmware like DD-WRT.
Might cost you $150 or so, and some time to flash firmware on one of them. But then you have a neat "kit" that can share any WiFi anywhere with 3 wired laptops and a few wireless laptops as well. Then you truly will be Crumbleavable.
(No Kraft Crumbles were damaged in the processing of this posting.)
Well, if you don't want to use ICS, then I guess various proxy servers and local NAT programs aren't going to work.
I have a WTR54GS travel router, that's going to a customer in a few daze. Works nicely and does what you want. The two laptops will go to the WTR54GS with CAT5 cables. If you travel, don't forget the cables.
There are some other travel routers available:
An "ethernet wireless client bridge" *MIGHT* work. See below.
Well, if each laptop has built in wireless, then it might be possible to connect both of them to the hotel system using the same account login and password. I've only tried this once, and it did work. However, I've been told that most turnkey hotel hot-spots look for multiple logins and drop one of the connections. The one and only time I tried that, it dropped the *FIRST* connection, which is rather odd.
A wired to wireless converter is called an "ethernet wireless client bridge". See the list of probable candidates in the FAQ at:
Most of these will allow you to bridge more than one MAC address. You would connect the wireless bridge, to a simple ethernet hub or switch, and then CAT5 to your two laptops. The problem is that the hot spot might decide that these are independent connections, each with their own MAC address. It also has the problem of loging in twice with the same account. I would give this scheme about a 25% chance of working.
Sorta. The right answer would be to either install a 2nd access point somewhere near our weak signal area. Lots of options here ranging from a repeater or range extender (which I detest), a WDS repeater, which is somewhat better, or just CAT5 between the two access points.
You can also play with the antennas at both ends:
The travel routers tend to be quite universal. You can use them at home exactly like in the hotel, except that you would position it for the best signal from your access point. Some can also act as a repeater, or a WDS bridge. Lots of options, and plenty of things to try.
Not me. This is the first time I've ever heard of Network Crumbler. I eventually found NetCrumbler at:
Why would I want WZC running at the same time as NS?
Nope. Netstumbler doesn't do that, with or without the patch. Turn off SSID broadcast and Netstumbler doesn't see it. NS is an active sniffer. The way NS works is that is transmits a probe request, which is answered by all access points with their SSID, except for the one's set to not broadcast their SSID. Some wireless clients, like the one that come with Netgear WG511 v2, will show hidden access points, but with a blank SSID. Of course, Linux based Kismet shows everything including wireless clients. It's a passive sniffer that doesn't require a response and simply extracts the SSID out of various connect/disconnect packets.
However, we're getting way off topic here. Netstumbler is a good tool for optimizing the location of a wireless client. Move the antenna around and tune for maximum. If SSID broadcast is off in the wireless access point, turn it on temporarily for the duration of the test.
Kismet looks like a great suggestion. Googling for Kismet and Windows, I find Kiswin32 is available on Windows too ... so I might try Kismet out on Windows and let you know if/how it works ...
It bombed for me. It runs under Cygwin. If the wireless card driver does not allow a promiscuous or monitor mode, then Kismet will only show traffic to and from the machine it's running upon.
That's Kismet Drone, which turns your WRT54G into a sniffer. If you're going to sacrifice a perfectly good WRT54G for the purpose, it's much easier to install DD-WRT firmware and use the supplied utilities. DD-WRT v23 SP3 comes with WiViz installed, which is not the best, screws up badly with more than about 20 machines, but does sorta work, sometimes, maybe:
You can also do quite a bit with telnet and the "wl" command.
For example: telnet 192.168.1.1 login: root password: xxxxxxx wl ap 0 (turn off access point mode) wl scan (scan for access points) (wait about 15 seconds) wl scanresults (display results) wl ap 1 (turn access point mode back on)
Note that it shows two different access points with an SSID of "linksys". Also note the number of 2Wire wireless routers using insecure WEP encryption. Time to yell at the neighbors (again).
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