NAT problem....

[longpot]

Right, i'm running a LAN party next weekend, all of our servers and network are up and running fine. However we have now been told we are allowed to use the WiFi at the hall, so we can have internet, great. However i can't get everything to work right.

We have a DHCP/DNS server which works fine, however the wireless router also has DHCP (limited to 5 clients) and we cant disable this. So i've been trying to set up a NAT server to route data between the two networks. I have followed the server 2003 deployment guides but cannot get the damn thing to work right. I have got as far as internal clients being able resolve google.com to an IP, but ping looses all packets. Clients gateway address are set to that of the NAT server, and the DNS server is told to forward all unknown queries to the NAT server....

I've been pulling my hair out over this one, am i even trying the right thing??

[WhiteKnight]

The way i`d probably do it is like this.

Server setup with ICS and 2 network cards, one ethernet, and the other either wifi or ethernet.
Connect the first network card to your lan party... the other wifi / lan to the router.
Setup ICS as its default configuration with the wifi / lan card as the "external" card.

That should be all you need to do.

This should enable NAT and DHCP on the lan party network and sort the rest for you.
Internal clients will get a valid IP / gateway / DNS server or relay and it should "just work". At least it has in my experience.

[longpot]

We tried using ICS but it wont let us use a different DHCP server, and we really don't want to have to change everything so soon to the LAN, the NAT server has 2 NIC's as suggested, one WiFi and one Ethernet. We have got closer now though with everything but FTP working.

[WhiteKnight]

you could just disable DHCP on the server, and use a spare pc as the "router" running normal windows xp ICS.

[Murray-Mint]

Indeed, there's no real need to overcomplicate this if it's just for 25 people. PC running Windows XP with a wireless card and a wired network connection. Just right click on the wireless connection and go to properties, turn on Internet Connection Sharing.

Then plug the wired connection into your switch and everyone should get an IP of 192.168.0.x and will be able to access the Interwub.

Otherwise with Server 2003, you're looking at using RRAS (Routing and Remote Access) which is a lot more painful!

[WhiteKnight]

XP ics will support up to 254 people wont it ? standard class C subnet.

I wouldnt reccomend it for that many tho.

[Murray-Mint]

I'd guess so :) I've never used it for anything over about 10 people really. Took the time to learn how to use Server 2003 instead.

However, for 25 it should be fine!

[longpot]

We have NAT and routing all working now under server 2003, turned out the problem was to do with the static route we had set up. The reason for not using ICS was that we have no control over static address for the servers, and we can't control where the clients end up. As it stands we grab the MAC address from the DHCP server and use them to assign the IP based on seat number, gives us control over who is doing what.