• Networking

  • Connecting two computers via a third computer


desktop 1 and desktop2 are connected trough a network cable, I can access desktop2 from desktop 1 with http://169.254.236.81/

desktop 1 and laptop are connected trough wifi, and can access desktop 1 from laptop with http://192.168.1.102/

laptop and desktop 2 are not directly connected, is their a way to connect laptop to desktop 2 on my browser (if I want to make it a server)

I tried 192.168.1.102/169.254.236.81 it makes no sense but I tried, it obviously didn't work, I googled it but I kept getting results for connecting two computer to each other only. any idea?
I think you have to bridge the wifi and the LAN adapter on the desktop. I think then they will belong to the same network. is the desktop a dhcp server or not?
Cleaned up the topic a bit, guys avoid useless posts and please stay on topic.

@Ra8: Can you give us a bit more info? What do you mean by "I can access"? How did you get those IP addresses?

I think you're addressing the problem wrong. Instead of connecting your laptop to desktop2 (and having desktop1 act as a gateway between the two LANs), why not create a single LAN? If all your computers are on the same network, they will all be connected without extra configuration.

The cool part is that it's so easy to set up. All you need to do is connect all three computers to "The Internet". The way it works is that when you "Connect to the Internet", you're actually connecting to a private home network centralized around your router, and the router will act like a gateway to the Internet.

All you need to do then, is figure out what address each computer (node) will get. Your router is probably preconfigured to act as a DHCP server, which means it will automatically assign an IP adress to each new node. (Alternativel you could turn that off and manually assign each IP, do as you please).

The way to find out the IP address of each computer depends on the OS running the machine. If you don't know how to it, do the following (I'm assuming all machines run some version of Windows):

1- connect everything to the internet
2- on each computer go to Start>Run>cmd
3- type "ipconfig"
4- show us the output here for each computer.
Essentially one of your computers is on the two networks, and the other two are each on one of the networks. You need to use that "common" computer to bridge the two networks, it will act as a gateway for the two networks.
You did not mention what OS you use. In Windows, I believe there is something called "bridge", I'm not sure what it does but I think it does exactly what you want. Try to go into the network connections screen in the "common computer" (desktop 1), select the two adapters (wifi and ethernet) and right click and select "Bridge Connections". See if that does it.
As rahmu said, router is the best option.

However, if you don't have one, - or you don't want to use wifi on the second desktop -
You can enable Internet connection sharing on [desktop 1] and then you can easily connect from the laptop to the desktop 2.

That's a tutorial how to do it in XP ( I guess it's XP, I remember 169.54.X.X is the automatic tcp/ip addressing without dhcp for win2000 and xp )

Link

PS: I don't guarantee that it will work;

Back in old days I did it and it worked. ( I had one pppoe account and a switch, so I shared the connection on four computers and I could easily access them all remotely)


Edit: I have a slow connection, I couldn't see rolf's post before me, Bridging should work like a charm also
Bridge Connections
rahmu wrote@Ra8: Can you give us a bit more info? What do you mean by "I can access"? How did you get those IP addresses?
I installed Apache on the three computers and when i enter the computer's ip address on my browser i'll be on the main folder of the server of the other computer. i got those by ip-config.
@rolf i used windows

anyway i used rolf's and yasamoka's solution to bridge the connections and now i can easily connect my laptop to desktop 2.
Thank you all for your help