From Leo's mailbag:
> From: A Computer User
> Sent: May 30, 2007
> To: Ask Leo!
> Subject: sharing connections on the road
>
> Leo,
> My wife and I live 'on the road' fulltime in an RV. We do not live in a
> permanently located house and therefore do not subscribe to any sort of
> broadband internet service. When we need it we obtain Internet access
> at various wifi hotspots encountered while traveling (e.g. Flying J
> truck stops, hiway rest areas, RV campgrounds, etc.). We each have our
> own laptop and I plan to set up a wireless 'home' network to share a
> printer and mass storage. However, if I do set up a wireless home
> network, will I still be able to connect to wifi hotspots? Would we be
> forced to choose a connection with either one or the other? I can
> envision the not uncommon scenario of sending an email message with a
> file attached. If the file were located on a network drive, I'd want
> access to both the home network and the hotspot. Also, in many (most)
> cases, access to these hotspots requires paid entry and I would like to
> be able to share that Internet access with the second laptop. Is there
> any configuration - even something that requires additional hardware -
> that would allow access to both networks (the home network in the RV
> and any encountered wifi hotspot) at the same time?
Being an occasional RV'er myself, and with my wife also occasionally bringing
along her laptop, I've consider this problem from time to time. Unfortunately
there's no real clean solution.
The solution I would most likely take is this: have both laptops connect
wirelessly to the hotspot, and use Hamachi to set up a VPN between the two.
That'll look like a local area network between the two machines, and yet both
will be connected to the internet directly. I do this all the time with several
machines in different locations. The only difference for you is that your
machines happen to be near each other.
http://ask-leo.com/hamachi_a_simple_vpn.html
Alternately - one could connect the machines to each other with a cable,
in addition to their wireless connections to the internet.
http://ask-leo.com/can_i_network_two_computers_with_just_a_cable.html
Alternately #2 - have one machine connecto the hotspot using its wireless
connection, connect a wireless access point to its ethernet port, turn on
internet connection sharing on that machine and have the second machine
connect to that wireless access point instead of the hotspot.
http://ask-leo.com/what_is_internet_connection_sharing.html
In the diagram in that article replace the "Ethernet/LAN" connection with
a wireless access point on computer A that computer B connects to.
Good luck!
Thanks for asking,
Leo
Article 1612
| Category:
Networking
