wireless router setup requirements

My goal is to not have to have any pc turned on inorder for any other
pc or laptop to share the internet or files. My present wireless
router (802.11b) requires pc #1 to be on, inorder to share the net
with the other pc's and laptops (right now I don't recall if this is
true to share files tho; my guess is not true).

Are there wireless routers (802.11b) which you can recommend and when
set up don't require any pc/laptop to be on, inorder to share the net
or files among the other pc's/laptops at home?

frankg <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> My goal is to not have to have any pc turned on inorder for any other
> pc or laptop to share the internet or files. My present wireless
> router (802.11b) requires pc #1 to be on, inorder to share the net
> with the other pc's and laptops (right now I don't recall if this is
> true to share files tho; my guess is not true).
>
> Are there wireless routers (802.11b) which you can recommend and when
> set up don't require any pc/laptop to be on, inorder to share the net
> or files among the other pc's/laptops at home?
>

I don't know what kind of setup you have. But by using a router as the
gateway device to the LAN or WAN, it means that the only devices that
needs to be on are the router and the modem.

Any machine that is connected to the router does not need another machine
to access the LAN or (WAN - Internet). This is true unless you're using
the ICS of one machine that was originally connected to the ISP and its
NIC MAC was provisioned with the ISP to access their network and that
machine can access the Internet and the other machines are going through
it so that their NIC MAC(s) are not discovered by the ISP and are not
being blocked from accessing the Internet, otherwise, they are being
blocked.

If this is the case, the the router has a MAC cloning feature that allows
the NIC MAC of the machine that was provisioned by the ISP to be entered
into the router. The router fakes out the ISP thinking it's using the
computer's NIC and all machines connected to the router can share the
connection that the router provides.

http://www.homenethelp.com/web/explain/about-NAT.asp

Or if you're just using ICS, it's not needed anymore because of the
router. If you're using a FW on the machines behind the router -- a good
thing to do to protect on the outbound Trojan, then you'll need to tell
the FW on each machine about the possible DHCP IP(s) that can be issued
by the router to the other machines on ports 137, 138, 138, and (445 NT
based O/S) in order to do MS file and print sharing. If you don't have a
FW on the machines, then the LAN part of the router with or without a FW
on the machines is going to provide the connections on the LAN side with
no special configuration required on your part.

Duane

"frankg" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My goal is to not have to have any pc turned on inorder for any other
> pc or laptop to share the internet or files. My present wireless
> router (802.11b) requires pc #1 to be on, inorder to share the net
> with the other pc's and laptops (right now I don't recall if this is
> true to share files tho; my guess is not true).

This is not right. Assuming you have an ethernet cable or DSL modem, you
should be able to connect four or so computers via wired ethernet to the
router, and dozens via wireless. No specific computer should need to be on
to connect to the internet using another.

You might have a variety of options on your router that could cause
connection problems (WEP keys wrong, MAC filtering on, Access time
limitations enabled, etc.) but these would not be affected by turning on or
off any computer.

What would cause your problem is if you have a USB modem connected to a
'gate' computer, then the router connected to the 'gate'. (You could also
do this with an ethernet modem, but you'd need two ethernet adapters in the
gate computer.) If this is the case, your all traffic from all computers
passes through the gate computer, and it would need to be on. But I expect
you'd know this if you had it.

Send more details.