Trouble with using a USB wireless adaptor as an access point

Hello - and thanks in advance for any help offered...

My current (perfectly functional) setup is as follows. I've a PC with a PCI wireless card, connecting to a WPA-enabled router, and that works fine.

The problem with this, however, is that the router's WPA security isn't supported by my Nintendo DS Lite, and I've no right to go changing the security settings on it - it's not my router and I'd annoy the rest of the house if I messed about with it. So I purchased a USB wireless dongle (ZyDAS ZD1211B), and installed that on my PC.

So I've now got a PC with a PCI wireless card on the back (to connect to the router) and a USB adaptor on the front. I'd like to have my USB adaptor serving as an access point, to which the DS will connect - so it'll be DS connecting to USB access point, and the access point getting its Internet connectivity through the PCI card and router.

But I'm not even managing to get the USB stick to behave at the moment, never mind getting the DS involved; I've asked the USB dongle to act as an AP, specifying its "Bridge Adaptor" as the working PCI card. Once I do this, the status of the USB adaptor's connection appears in Windows as connected for a few seconds (though during this time the DS can't connect to it) and then it wavers and displays a "Limited or no connectivity" message.

I'm a little confused as to why that particular error's showing up. There surely shouldn't be an issue of the USB dongle being able to access the PCI card's network connection, since they're both connected to the same machine...

Can anyone please shed any light on what I'm perhaps doing wrong? My thanks again in advance.

 

I don't think it's possible to use a wireless adapter as an access point, the most I think you could do would be to share the internet connection (ICS)

 

According to this spec your dongle is capable of acting as an access point.

http://mjtech.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11_35&products_id=78

However you need a second DHCP server for your second network you are creating and bridging to (dongle to Nintendo).

from what I can see the net is full of people looking for suitable drivers for this, so you should carefully check out this aspect.

good luck and keep posting.

 

Hi studiot - thanks for the reply, I was starting to come to that conclusion myself, after an hour or so of messing about with different combinations (using the PCI card as an AP, the USB to the router.. "borrowing" a housemate's USB dongle.. etc etc), the most success I had was for the DS to pick up the access point, attempt to connect to it, and fail due to DHCP problems.

So, assuming I can recreate the scenario where I was getting that error, I'll see if I can find some way of setting up a second DHCP server - though from what you say it sounds like that'll be a challenge.. ah well, challenge is good.

Cheers for your help, I'll keep this updated as to my search - but if anyone has any pointers that I should check out regarding setting up DHCP I'd love to hear them.

 

from the link he posted it says about your dongle:Ad hoc, Infrastructure (Access Points is needed)

So I really think it's not fair to say it can be an access point if it needs one to be used in that manner

 

For what it's worth I'm pretty sure it can be an access point. The software with any of the wireless adaptors I'm using has an option to make the dongle run as an AP, and once it does that, and I assign a SSID to it, the DS can pick it up as if it were a new wireless network.. an ad hoc one perhaps, but if I can get the DS to connect to an ad hoc network that, in turn, uses a working method (ICS if it works, anything else otherwise) to use the outgoing internet connection then that's fine by me.

On the subject of running DHCP, the DS doesn't seem to want to play that game. I've got a simple DHCP server running on my machine (dhcpd32 from jounin.net), and when I try and connect the DS to my access point, the DHCP server immediately detects it, and says clearly that it's offering the DS the use of an IP address (192.168.0.102). It does this twice. The DS, after a few seconds, shows an error message saying that it was not able to obtain an IP address. Which is odd...

 

Not being a game player I know little about the DS.
Is the offered IP address in its range?

The dongle is speced at being compatible with the DS in my link, which also clearly (?) states

Why are you using 192.168.x.x as you second network range? surely this is already used by the primary?

 

The primary is 192.168.1.***. I would have thought this enough of a degree of separation (ie, 192.168.0.*** would be regarded as an entirely different range). Also, on a very-slightly-if-at-all relevant note, when using ICS, which might be required to pull this off, Windows gives you an address of 192.168.0.1 for the second connection, so I was using that as a sort of default.

I see no reason why the offered address shouldn't be in the range. My thoughts were that some kind of security is in place that's stopping the DHCP server from being able to give out IP addresses via the dongle.

..my other thoughts were that the discontinued Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector, that sets up all the sharing (and evidently DHCP) and such for you, is looking very tempting on eBay, heheh.

I'll keep playing, anyway, and let you know of any progress made. Thanks for your help so far.