How can I share internet access between 2 networks?

Question

I'm interested in sharing internet access between 2 networks. I recently moved, and my landlord has offered to share their internet access with me. I agreed, as it would cut my expenses down. The problem is that I have a no-ip account set up that i was using to host my own site, as well as port forwarding set up on my personal router, and I sometimes work from home, and would like to have my network, but utilize their Internet connection.It also seems like a interesting little project to work on. Is there any way that I can use my router to create my own separate network using their internet connection?

Answer 1

Resolved. I was able to resolve my issue by flashing my router. I used the custom firmware from dd wrt, and configured my router as a bridged repeater for my landlords internet connection. This allowed me to have physical connections to my router in my apartment, as well as wireless connections. Minus occasional connections dropping, I haven't experienced any issues thus far. Thanks to everyone for contributing.

Answer 2

You would want to use one computer as a network bridge and connect it into your network.

How to bridge network connections in Windows 7

Alternatively, you could buy and setup a wireless network bridge to relay the signal through, maybe something like:.

Edimax EW-7228APn 150Mbps 11n Wireless Range Extender/Access Point with 5 Port Switch

Answer 3

If you wish to use your own router and create a separate network from your landlord's, you should use a wireless bridge. Using the bridging feature in Windows as Jason Gordon has suggested would put your computer inside of your landlord's network and outside whatever network you created for yourself.

With a wireless bridge connecting to your landlord's wireless, your router connected to the wireless bridge, and your PC and other devices connected to your router you'd have a separate network and Internet access (and as an added bonus, access to all of the devices on your landlord's network, which they might not realize).

However, your router isn't directly connected to the Internet, so port forwarding won't work. The only way to expose a device on your network to the public Internet would be to configure your landlord's router to forward, say port 80 to your router's Internet-facing (public) IP address, then in turn configure your router to forward port 80 again to whatever end-device that traffic should go to. Additionally, their ADSL modem needs to be in bridge mode, otherwise it will be performing NAT on the traffic it passes to their router, defeating even the port-forwarding configured there.

All of this may not be possible for you unless your landlord is willing to let you make those changes, and even then, I'd be prepared for headaches and problems getting this to work since you'll have two routers forwarding ports...a non-standard configuration indeed.

Answer 4

If your landlord gives your a LAN connection. you can simply add that LAN line to your WAN port on your router, and set that port up to use DHCP, and get an ip from the router. then you can add your PC and other hosts on the LAN side of your router, and you have your own network.

There are some problems

1) this what is called a double NAT, which can cause several problems, and make troubleshooting difficult.

2) if you want port forwarding and such, you need to get access to your landlord router to set that up there (assuming that he has a router), then you have to set it up again on your router.. things could get messy.

If you get only WIFI from your landlord, things get even more messy, and you need to setup a wifibridge, but I really would not recommend it. too buggy and too much trouble.

For the stuff that you used to host on your PC with a no-IP and port forwarding setup before, maybe consider to rent some cheap hosting somewhere, and host it there instead?