Quote:
Originally Posted by
makecoldplayhistory 
I've gone back to the crossover cable without the switch. That's what was working and stopped when I tried the switch last night*
I'm trying the setup I am because the router is in a different room to the machines.
In the office I have my sig rig, a Linux machine, a machine for storage (like a cheap NAS) and a spare machine I use for testing old components, troubleshooting friend's components etc.
It's only really my sig rig that uses the wifi a lot (and that's the host PC). It's good to have it on the other machines though. The reason I needed to ICS (or similar) is
because file transfers through the router with all of the machines connected wirelessly was too slow to be of any use. 4 mins to transfer a word document.
Cheers
*although I didn't touch any settings etc
This is what i was thinking your reason would be, while it would be nice having them all connect through the main rig to the internet, and be on a lan to transfer files, consumer versions of Windows just aren't built to do stuff like that really. if you really wanted to do that through a PC, you'd end up spending a extra building yourself a dedicated router PC with a special version of linux loaded on it. then you would have to deal with finding a compatible Wifi adapter.
What you need to do is find another wireless router to hook all of your PCs directly to and use it as a wireless bridge to the main router. Not every router supports this feature out of the box, and some routers don't have the capability to have custom firmwares loaded on them. if you can tell me what hardware you have Modem/router wise and how its setup i should be able to find you a suitable router to do the job.
the Upsides of running a network this way are Numerous:
1. Routers generally have better Wifi transceivers in them than what you plug into your PC, so you will have better maximum throughput and signal strength on your main wireless connection.
2. using a router will Preserve QOS functionality, so your main system cant hog all the bandwidth if you are downloading something and want to use one of the other PCs on the web.
3. you wont have to deal with getting multiple client PCs setup behind ICS, which im not sure is even possible.
4. You will be able to transfer files between the PCs quickly