In the apartment in Italy, we now have satellite internet via PPPoE for work. It gets 10 meg down and 1 up and is much more reliable than the crappy 3G dongle we had be coping with.

However, the office have seen fit to send us a Cisco Meraki Z1 (which I know nothing about). It connects to the work PC via Cat5, but when I tried the work iPad on Wifi it has apparently connected to the secure wifi the Z1 is putting out without any input on my end. Seems I'm way beyond my depth.

I still however want to share the connection without Cat5 for our two Android phones and a couple of personal laptops. I have a netbook which would be perfect for doing this, but apparently Windows 7 Starter lacks the necessary networking bits to share a wired connection using the wifi adapter.

If I dual booted Linux (I want to retain Windows as I have no disc for the netbook install), could a lightweight install provide me what I need AND boost the speed of the netbook for general web browsing/media replay? I'm thinking maybe Xubuntu...

Really appreciate any thoughts.

Read this first

http://www.thesecurityblogger.com/cool- ... meraki-z1/

Another alternative, if it's not going to be a permanent solution might be to use a Live Linux distribution, booting from wither CD/DVD or USB.Thinking about it, you should use a live distro, initially, just to make sure it will work, before you go to the trouble of installing.

The Z1 is a lovely bit of kit, it's fit in to the companies account where they'll also have your ipad on their so they'll have already added the settings to the ipad so it connects straight away.

The Z1 will also monitor traffic etc so your employers will be able to see every device connected and the traffic going through it.

If your employer allows you to use the wifi they should be able to give you the key for the network so you can connect, if not you could proxy it through another machine but please remember your employer will be able to monitor and apply restrictions to all traffic going through it

Thanks guys.

My employer allows personal use (providing I don't go downloading huge illegal things obviously). But they won't provide the wifi code as the iPads work automatically and they want us to use a wired connection for the work laptop. Unfortunately, the guy who installed the satellite put the cable/box on the wrong side of our lounge and we only have the standard short Cat5 cable in the box the Meraki came in.

So it's convenience AND the opportunity to connect our personal laptops as well. As it is, we use a company issue 3G dongle, so I suspect they could monitor everything if they really wanted to.

I tried to run Xubuntu live off USB and the screen just goes for a splash page, then just black with a cursor. That's it after 4 hours. Now it won't even let me select live or install. Worth trying another distro? Any other ideas?

Or should I give up and accept the situation?

get a cheap wifi access point and plug it into the Z1 via the wired connection? Depends exactly what the setup is but assuming they haven't locked the wired connection to the laptop, as long as you keep the channels the two wifi networks operate on far enough apart (and a lot of WAPs will hunt the best channel automatically) you should be OK.



Jon

Don't have the money to spend. But even if I did, I'm in an Alpine village 90 minutes from Turin, with no car.

Guess I have to give up. Thanks anyway everybody

I've never used this, or Windows starter, but it should add the missing bits for you
http://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/

Thanks, I tried it. Windows Starter still didn't seem to like it.

Installed Linux Mint on dual boot and everything is sweet as a nut. Longwinded, but got there. Thanks for all your help.