I have a need to setup a VoIP phone that needs to be plugged into a wired net. However, I only have wireless Internet access as the modem/router are upstairs and not accessible to the phone. I have a Windows 7 laptop that has both a wired and wireless adapter. I would like to be able to plug the VoIP phone into the laptop, have the laptop perform routing so that requests to other networks (ie the Interweb) are forwarded to the wireless network card, who then forwards it along to the router, etc. I would think that enabling Internet Connection Sharing on the wireless adapter might be able to accomplish this, but there are so few options published that I have doubts it would work – in particular, how does my VoIP phone get its IP assigned (is there a hidden DHCP server enabled with ICS?) how is the routing/NAT handled? If my wireless card's address is 192.168.5.144, and my wired card's address is statically assigned to be 192.168.11.1, my VoIP phone is statically assigned to be 192.168.11.2, and ICS is enabled with the proper services enabled, would my VoIP phone be able to connect to the web?
Edit: Better yet, if I just enable bridging between the two connections, could the VoIP phone get an IP assigned BY the real router?
Best Answer
If you need all the devices on the same subnet, it looks like what you want is to bridge the connections. ICS does enable a DHCP server of sorts, it will probably assign any connected device (your VoIP phone in this case) an IP in a different subnet from your laptop's wireless card (something like 192.168.137.x), so if you want everything on the same network it would be easiest to have the DHCP server in the router assign an IP to your VoIP phone. Which means, bridging the wired connection to the wireless. If all you're trying to do is just get internet to the VoIP phone, then ICS might work fine as long as you have the phone and the wired adapter set to DHCP.
Unless you have specific reasons to, I'd recommend against statically assigning all those devices -- the router might be trying to give one IP while your device is trying to take another.