Bridging

[Raion]

First, like always some background info

My brother is building a new computer. But he only comes to my house when he gets vacation in college (he lives on-campus). I have a Cable modem, the cable modem has a Ethernet & USB connector, as far as I am concerned you cannot use both at the same time (never tried it). One time, while trying to set up a friends XBOX and computer to work together I came across this bridging theory, but never really tried it.

So now, I'm going to bridge my computer and my brothers computer but without buying a new ethernet card (no more PCI slots on my pc, and I don't want to remove one of my PCI cards for > 1 wk). When I came across the XBOX theory a while back, I noticed that you can connect the modem to the NIC card, and then connect a USB cable to your USB slot and the opposite end of the USB cable to the XBOX then configure some settings.

Now to the point of this post, I'm using WinXP pro SP2, I don't seem to find that article again and google points me only to ethernet 2 ethernet bridging.

[warl0ck7]

You are getting a few things wrong here(or i am confised ), you
need a serial to ethernet bridge(something like that) to connect a modem to
a NIC, since they are two very very different things, check the website below
it might help you.

http://www.a2bcommunication.com/ethernet_modems.htm

[rcgreen]

Check into Internet Connection Sharing. Your pc connects to the internet
by the cable modem, and shares the connection with other computers.
It is included with Windows.

If you connect to the cable modem by ethernet, I don't know if there's
a difficulty connecting the Xbox to your pc by usb, but it would surely
work the other way around, although I've heard that there are
performance issues connecting by usb. Obviously, the preferred way
would be to have two ethernet cards in the pc, but if you lack slots,
try it with usb.

[rapier57]

I think Raion meant the cable modem (or DSL modem, whathaveyou). If you have a system hard connected to the cable modem, and want to bridge to the Firewire or USB ports, you can do that by opening the network connection on the XP system, select the wired connection and the Firewire/USB connection and right-click and select to bridge them.

These bridges can be added or removed as needed. The USB network connection will have to be set up first between the two systems. The best performance, of course, is through USB ports and both systems need to be using the same level of USB, prefereably 2.

[Raion]

umm you're explanations look complicated and I think you misunderstood what i meant so i'll illustrate it for you

What I want to know is how to set that up on the OS (or the software end so to speak) so that it works.

[rcgreen]

Yes, that should be easy. If you are running windows XP,
you already have the software.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_ics/

[MasterTsunami]

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/248

You need special USB cables if you don't want to use a crossover cable.

[Und3ertak3r]

and I don't want to remove one of my PCI cards for > 1 wk)

Why?.. you can use a USB-Ethernet adapter.. I use them all the time in my repair work..

I know it dosent answer your question on bridging.. but it helps solve your problem.. (oh and while your at it.. a cheap 10/100 hub.. )

[dalek]

Why not just use a cheap router, at least it will give you the added protection of a hardware firewall.....

[Raion]

A router doesn't seem like it'll work for me, I'm trying to cut on external parts and since both computers are going to be in the same room and it'll be a tight fit (small room) I don't want any more.. (they might even be right next to each other idk) also, the cheapest router I can find is $22 not including shipping :/

However, I like the USB-Ethernet adapter, seems like it'll work..I just can't find a place that I can buy it from, my two favorite sites to buy stuff off don't have it (newegg and xoxide) but I did a froogle search on it, and at prices ranging from as low as $18 and as high as $100 doesn't seem like it'll be worth it for > 1 wk.