3 replies to this topic

[jai]

Hi !

I am a student trying to share my university lan internet connection with my kindle fire by creating a wifi hotspot through my laptop running  windows 7 sp1 .
I am able to host a wifi network by typing the netsh command in the terminal.

In order to connect to the internet ,the mac address of the device needs to be registered on the university portal (only one device can be registered per student, which in my case, happens to be my laptop).
In other words, only registered devices can connect to the internet over the university lan.

Now, the kindle fire (as does my ipod touch) connects all right with the wifi network hosted by my computer. I am able to use wifi explorer to transfer files to my kindle fire as well. But at the top right corner of the screen, in the notifications area, i see a cross over the wifi signal even when it is able to transfer files through the wifi connection.

So, as i see it, the fire is able to connect to the wifi network hosted by my laptop but is not able to access the university lan shared over the same.

Now, my query is, is it possible that while sharing the lan over my wifi network, the lan somehow 'sees' the mac address of my kindle fire (mac address of which is not registered ) and denies it access to the university's internet connetion ?

[hgfire]

jai, on 22 February 2012 - 11:09 AM, said:

Hi !

I am a student trying to share my university lan internet connection with my kindle fire by creating a wifi hotspot through my laptop running  windows 7 sp1 .
I am able to host a wifi network by typing the netsh command in the terminal.

In order to connect to the internet ,the mac address of the device needs to be registered on the university portal (only one device can be registered per student, which in my case, happens to be my laptop).
In other words, only registered devices can connect to the internet over the university lan.

Now, the kindle fire (as does my ipod touch) connects all right with the wifi network hosted by my computer. I am able to use wifi explorer to transfer files to my kindle fire as well. But at the top right corner of the screen, in the notifications area, i see a cross over the wifi signal even when it is able to transfer files through the wifi connection.

So, as i see it, the fire is able to connect to the wifi network hosted by my laptop but is not able to access the university lan shared over the same.

Now, my query is, is it possible that while sharing the lan over my wifi network, the lan somehow 'sees' the mac address of my kindle fire (mac address of which is not registered ) and denies it access to the university's internet connetion ?

Jai, based on what you have described, I'm incline to agree with you. The university is enforcing the ground rules it has established. Not only is the lan seeing the MAC address, its also seeing an attempt of an unknown internal ip address.

[jai]

Thanks for the reply !
I'll get a wifi router and have the mac of my Kindle fire registered on the university portal then.

[jai]

Solved it.. My MAC address had nothing to do with the internet connection sharing. I just had to run my antivirus in internet connection sharing mode.

On my ipod touch, i was able to specify a system wide proxy in the settings screen itself. Kindle fire turned out to be a bit disappointing in this respect.

However, I was able to browse the internet on aurora (firefox) by changing the proxy settings on the 'about:config' page.