Share USB cellular Internet connection on Vista via router wifi

Question

I'm at the inlaws in the country. Their only internet connection is via a USB cellular stick attached to their Windows Vista machine. The machine doesn't have a wifi card, but it does have a network card.

I've connected the computer (via the network card and ethernet cable) to a DLINK DIR-601 router (in one of the LAN ports, not WAN). The hope is to create a wifi network in the house that can connect to the outside world via the cell connection.

This page has some good advice, which I've followed: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/Using-ICS-Internet-Connection-Sharing I enabled DHCP on the router, but have the Vista machine connecting to it with a static IP (outside the DHCP range).

So far, I've created the wifi network and devices can connect to it. However, they can't connect out to the internet.

I'm pretty good on the *nix and OSX side with networking, but pretty much a noob in Windows. Can someone help me get this working?

Answer 1

A configuration to try:

• Setup ICS (Internet connection Sharing) on the Vista machine, sharing the USB stick network (the Internet) with Ethernet port.

• Hook the Ethernet port to the WAN port of the router and set it (the router) to get it's WAN IP via DHCP.

• Setup the router's LAN side to provide DHCP (setup with different IP network range from teh WAN-side) and wireless.

• Connect your notebook via wireless to the router.

ICS will translate and route the Internet traffic to and from the first LAN (between the Vista machine and the router's WAN port), and then the router will translate and route that traffic in and out of the second LAN (the wireless network).