How do I connect a wired desktop to internet via a wireless laptop?

Question

I have a desktop system running Ubuntu 10.10. It has no wireless card just a wired Ethernet card.

I have a Thinkpad T42 laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 in the same room as the desktop. It uses its wireless connection to connect to a wireless access point in another room. The wireless access point provides internet access to the laptop.

Is there anyway to create a wired connection between the desktop and the laptop so that the desktop can connect out to the internet through the laptop?

Yes there is. It is called "TCP/IP routing" and all that is needed for it already exists on both machines. — mailq, Sep 24 '11 at 19:48
possible duplicate of http://serverfault.com/questions/146495/setting-up-a-linux-server-to-share-an-internet-connection — mailq, Sep 24 '11 at 19:49
Do I just connect them together? Do I have to set static IPs or can the desktop get allocated an IP from the access point? — , Sep 24 '11 at 19:50
Read the link. And books about routing. There is no GUI to do this. It's not Windows. — mailq, Sep 24 '11 at 19:55
Cool eh? Probably you shouldn't have asked "Is there?" but "How to?" :) But you are right, that would give the same nonsense answer. — mailq, Sep 24 '11 at 20:19
Another duplicate with more information: http://serverfault.com/questions/152363/bridging-wlan0-to-eth0 — mailq, Sep 24 '11 at 20:26
possible duplicate of How to Connect & Share your Internet Connection (Wired & Wireless) — Eric Carvalho, Aug 12 '15 at 17:47

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '11 at 23:53

I did this not that long ago for my brother when I set up Ubuntu 11.04 on his desktop and used an Ethernet cable between his machine and my Ubuntu 11.04 laptop, so his desktop could use my laptop's wireless. It was all GUI too, and required no extra packages or anything.

Unfortunately, I can't find the original source of my solution, but this post for how to do it in Ubuntu 9.10 should work just as well, it seems familiar. Basically, you just need to go to your network connections on your laptop, open Edit Connections..., click your wired Ethernet connection, and under IPv4 settings set the Method to "Shared to other computers". Then click Save and reboot your machine for it to take effect.

Also, just ran across this YouTube video showing how to do this. The guy's trying to share his connection to his Xbox in it, but it's pretty much the same task and same result. It really is pretty quick and simple to set up. — Knowledge Cube, Sep 24 '11 at 23:59

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 24 '11 at 19:55

It would be a bit tricky but it could work. You would need to set the default gateway to your primary router, bridge your LAN to your WLAN, make sure DNS is a match on the desktop and laptop. Pretty sure I'm missing a few steps, but it gives you a general direction.

How do I connect a wired desktop to internet via a wireless laptop?

2 Answers2