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Can I simultaneously use ethernet for internet and wifi for home networking?

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LoneWolf121188

Member
Joined
Dec 31, 2004
Location
Osan AB, South Korea
Just moved into a new apartment in South Korea...I told my landlord I wanted internet, and a few Korean dudes showed up, did some stuff, and suddenly every ethernet port in the house now has it's own external IP address (100 mbps down/75 mbps up...there are some perks to living in the most connected country in the world!). Not really sure how that works, but bottom line is that my router is plugged into the living room and providing internet access for our phones and laptop, while my desktop is in another room plugged directly into the wall with it's own IP address.

Is there any way to get my desktop onto the wifi network (to connect to my wifi printer, for example) while simultaneously accessing the internet through ethernet? I imagine somewhere I could say "192.168.1.* goes through wifi, all other traffic goes through ethernet", but I'm not really sure where that setting would live.
 
How would this benefit you? You're limited by your internet speed, not your local network speeds.
 
There's always going to be some reduction in speed due to the saturated RF environment...case in point: 100 down/75 up on ethernet, 75 down/12 up over wifi. In the same room as the router though, I saw about 90 down/60 up, so the issue is the signal quality.
 
There's always going to be some reduction in speed due to the saturated RF environment...case in point: 100 down/75 up on ethernet, 75 down/12 up over wifi. In the same room as the router though, I saw about 90 down/60 up, so the issue is the signal quality.

So, if you're plugged in with Ethernet, how will using Wi-Fi at the same time benefit you on your desktop?
 
In my experience it is not possible to be connected to 2 seperate networks at the same time. Well, it is but it's expensive to setup, and the only times i have ever known something like that is with routers and multi WAN connections for redundancy, and load balancing. I have never heard of a single computer connected to multiple networks at the same time in a personal computing setup.

are all the systems that are internet connected getting their external IP as IPv6 or IPv4? If it's IPv6 it's likely they are all on some internal network. You will need to get a network map to figure out how they are all interconnected to make sure that all the PC's that you want/need accessing your LAN can.

Get the network map for your place of residence, and see how all of the devices are connected. Depending on how they map it out they may use mac addresses, or IP address, or something else to determine it all. Also since the devices aren't theirs it is possible they don't have a network map but only a wire map that you can use to reference. Regardless, you need to get it all mapped out, or drop some cash and learn about dual connections.
 
IIRC you could setup a pfsense box with load-balancing. No idea how well it works but it's an option.
 
Won't matter if the Ethernet is on the same router as the Wi-Fi.

he said that each ethernet port in the house has its own external IP address, so it sounds like each ethernet port has its own dedicated line, and the ethernet the router is plugged into is not the same ethernet that his PC is plugged into.
 
at the shop we use wifi from the laptop to the router and Ethernet from the laptop to the programing device to reprogram cars all day long, that way we can reprogram them sitting where ever they are. wifi and Ethernet at the same time works like a charm.
we had one car kill a battery in a store parking lot and even used a phone for a router, hotspot, whatever you call it.
 
at the shop we use wifi from the laptop to the router and Ethernet from the laptop to the programing device to reprogram cars all day long, that way we can reprogram them sitting where ever they are. wifi and Ethernet at the same time works like a charm.
we had one car kill a battery in a store parking lot and even used a phone for a router, hotspot, whatever you call it.

He's trying to get two internet connections.

What you're doing is using Wi-Fi for internet and Ethernet for an interface to the tuning software.
 
that's right atm.

if he tries that I don't think he's going to gain anything in speed.
 
He's trying to get two internet connections.

What you're doing is using Wi-Fi for internet and Ethernet for an interface to the tuning software.

No, I'm pretty sure he is trying to use Ethernet for internet, and WiFi for being connected to his home network(filesharing, and WiFi printer access). He doesn't want to just use the WiFi because it is slower than just being plugged right into the wall.
 
You can certainly do that - Make sure your wireless network does not have a default gateway set and you'll be fine. Any traffic that is not local to your network will take the default route out to the Internet via Ethernet.
 
No, I'm pretty sure he is trying to use Ethernet for internet, and WiFi for being connected to his home network(filesharing, and WiFi printer access). He doesn't want to just use the WiFi because it is slower than just being plugged right into the wall.
Exactly. Sorry the working wasn't very clear.

You can certainly do that - Make sure your wireless network does not have a default gateway set and you'll be fine. Any traffic that is not local to your network will take the default route out to the Internet via Ethernet.
The problem is that I want everything else on the wifi network to be able to access the internet. So I want my computer to have one external IP address through Ethernet, and the wifi network to have a different external IP address from the router, but I want my desktop's internet traffic to go through ethernet and all the other traffic to go through the router but stay on the home network. And for my iPhone, laptop, etc that's connected to the router, that needs to be able to access the internet too. This sounds like it's probably more trouble than it's worth...
 
Maybe plug the WiFi modem into the plug that your PC is plugged into, and then run the PC hardwired from that router?
 
So what you want is Internet Connection Sharing. What OS are you running? It shouldn't be hard to setup. Basically you will be turning your computer into a router of sorts. The LAN gear uses your machine as the default gateway.
 
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