Time Capsule Setup not working. Much stricter network than normal.

[trebbag]

I recently purchased a Time Capsule and am trying to set it up under a very tightly controlled network that my dorms are run by. We are offered internet access through an ethernet port in the wall or through wireless. The internet here is restricted to the point where we must input our individual student passwords in order to access the internet. Also, in the initial setup, a client security agent had to be installed just to be able to gain access to websites.

My ideal for the Time Capsule would be to use its USB port for wireless access to my printer, use its base station ability to better the weak connection I get from the wireless connection from my room, and to use it for Time Machine for my laptop.

My initial attempt to set up the Time Capsule used my laptops connection on the wireless network and the wired ethernet connection of the Time Capsule. Once the Time Capsule established its connection, my laptop could no longer access the internet. The Security Client Agent Registration/download page for our dorms came up. It wasn't until I reset the Time Capsule did I regain my internet connection on my laptop. This made me believe that only one device could use my individual password at one time.

Time Capsule is probably very easy to setup but these network conditions are making it much more difficult. This has caused problems for connecting my iPod Touch as well.

How should I go about setting up the Time Capsule in order to gain the ideal as closely as possible?

Thanks for any help that anyone can offer.

 

[Doctor Q]

I'm just learning to use a new Time Capsule myself, but I'll take a guess in case it helps you. My guess is that you could let the Time Capsule be "the one computer" on the school network, then let your laptop hide behind it using Network Address Translation (NAT).

To enable NAT in Airport Utility, you set Internet -> Internet Connection -> Connection Sharing to "Share a public IP address". That will enable the DHCP and NAT tabs.

I have yet to figure out if you'd also need to enable the "default host" (your laptop) on the NAT tab to make sure that all traffic gets to your laptop.