Issues Using Computer Internet for Router

[fred29812]

Ok, first of all, I'm not a networking genius by a long stretch so please bear with my ignorance.
My issues is this:
I needed a router that would work with an Alltel internet card to create wifi at home. I was told by a sales rep in Radio Shack that I could use a linksys router for this and that all I need to do was tell my desktop to allow internet sharing, which I've done, and connect the router to my desktop via ethernet cable and the router would use the internet from that computer for my wifi. This has NOT worked. My laptop/kindle are recognizing the router but neither will connect to the internet. I don't know if the desktop was supposed to recognize the router when I connected it but it didn't.
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!!!
Thanks,
Anne

[RTFMID10T]

For that to realistically work you would have to NAT your ip to use more ip addresses than you are given on the card and use your router as just an access point and not program it except for an SSID for wireless to connect and not use the WAN port on the router and set any device trying to connect to the internet to use the ip of the desktop with the card as the gateway address and use the DNS of your ISP. As well as share your Internet connection on your desktop and it would create an adhoc. I don't think I've ever tried that but I know networking and that's the fundamentals of it and how it would work. I think you would have to give a static ip to the router and any device connecting to the wireless.

[benmar]

goto settings of your router and select DHCP connection.....

[JorgeM]

The information you received at Radio Shack is 100% incorrect. I am not familiar with this Alltel internet card, but I did a quick search and found that its basically a wireless cell provider card. So, you have some options.

1) buy a router that allows for the connection of this type of card.
2) If you plan on plugging this card into your desktop for the purposes of sharing the connection, that is fine. You have to realize that you must have the desktop turned on at all times to provide this functionality. You should be able to use Internet Connection Sharing to share out this connection with the other NIC on your desktop. Unless your other NIC is a Wifi (802.11) card, you are not going to be able to create a Wifi network. If your desktop does have a Wifi card, then you can create an adhoc network so that other computers with Wifi can join your network. If the computer does not have a Wifi card, but just ethernet, you would have to connect a Wireless bridge to this ethernet card to create the adhoc Wifi network.

This seems like an awful lot of work, just to set up a wifi network. I would suggest buy an internet router that has the ability to plug in this (or other model) Alltel wireless data card.