Setting up both a wired LAN and a wireless internet connectino

[sjm98126]

Hello,
I am trying to setup a wired LAN between my desktop (which acts as a media file server for my htpc for now until i build a dedicated home media server), and my HTPC for streaming hd video. The router/modem are located on the first floor of the house, and both the media pc, and the desktop pc are on the 2nd floor. so for now, setting up a wired lan connecting directly to the router is out of the question.

Both my htpc and my desktop access the internet via their own wireless adapters. Internet connection speeds are fine for me. average about 30mbit down/8mbit up.. The problem is streaming large HD video from my desktop to my htpc via wireless is just too slow.. and it lags with files over 3gb. I am using a dual band netgear n600 router. What i want to do is connect the machines together via ethernet cable, and use that network just for file sharing. And while still keeping the wireless internet connections. I dont want to have the htpc leach off the bandwidth of my desktop's internet connection, and slow it down.

How can i go about doing this, and getting the machines to differentiate between the two networks? If i disable the wireless on one of the computers, it will transfer through the wired lan at gigabit speeds, but as soon as i do that, it starts stealing bandwidth from the other computer that is still connected wirelessly to the internet. If both wireless adapters are enabled and connected, it only does transfers over wireless. Both machines run windows 7 ultimate right now.

 

[tomatthe]

How are you connecting the two machines together?

 

[sjm98126]

At the moment the only way i was able to get it to work how i wanted it (aside from the htpc leaching off my internet connection on my desktop) was i had both machines connected to a wireless network. Then took a standard ethernet cable, connected both the computers directly together to the interal NIC's And then went into network and sharing center>change adapter settings (on both machines) and bridged the wireless and wired connections together. And what that ends up doing is using the wireless connection of the desktop to access the internet. I noticed when its configured like that, the wireless adapter on the htpc is not being used.

I also tried setting IPs for the nic cards. The router's IP is 192.168.1.1, so all the connected devices are 192.168.1.XX. So i changed the NIC on the PC to be 192.168.0.1, and on the htpc to 192.168.0.2. And if i unplugged the wireless adapters, That seemed to work ok, But if the wireless adapters were connected, The comptuers kinda defaulted to doing everything over the wireless.

I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to networking. But i have a friend who is an IT guy, and he deals with enterprise networks all day long. He suggested i setup a wireless bridge. and have all of my machines in that room connected to a switch, So they would each have their own connection to the internet, But would all be wired together, so i can still get gigabit speeds for file transfers. I kind of like this idea, because on the 2.4ghz channel, i have some wireless G devices connected, so the connection isn't running as fast as it could, And on the 5ghz channel, im getting a weak signal upstairs. So i'd probably need to buy another router and set it up as repeater anyway.

Now he said i could just buy a second router, and put it in bridging mode. But i was just watching a youtube video on wireless bridging, and in the video the guy said that i couldn't use a second router, and that it HAS to be just a wireless access point, then that would be connected to a switch. My friend and i both use the same routers (Netgear WNDR3700v3) I just bought mine last week to replace a crappy linksys wrt300n router, so i dont know much about it.

Is my friend right in saying i can set the WNDR 3700 to operate in bridge mode, and use the internal switch to connect my computers? or will i need to buy a dual band Wireless N access point, and a switch?

 

[tomatthe]

Remove any bridging on the connections.

I would try connecting the machines directly to each other with a network cable ( you may need a crossover cable, but 99% of cards theses days you don't). Put a static ip on both nics in a private ip range. Disable wireless on both machines, and make sure you can stream properly at that point. Then enable the wireless cards on each machine so they have internet access. I'm fairly sure the machine will be smart enough to know it doesn't need to go through your wifi/router after you have initially established the connection over the lan cable.

Possibly I missed something in there, but I think this should work.

 

[sjm98126]

Yea i tried that as well. both systems are only a couple weeks old, so im pretty sure i dont need a crossover cable. But yea i forgot to mention that, when i applied the bridges to the wired and wireless networks, it doesn't allow me to set an IP address. So when i tried it with the 192.168.0.1 on the NIC, it had no bridge present on either machine.

But yes, i can get full 100+MB/s transfers between machines with that configuration, but as soon as the wireless is introduced, it for some reason defaults to transferring files over the wireless connections, which normally runs at about 3 MB/s.

I did a little research on my router, and i did see something that it can be configured into wireless bridge mode. So i think tonight i'll go buy another router and just try to set it up that way, and connect all my computers to the switch on the router. And if that doesn't work, no big deal, as i was planning on buying another router to put in repeater mode anyway to boost my signal.