Laptop as an internet source, need help

I am trying to send an internet signal I am receiving from my laptop's wireless, through my laptop's ethernet port, into a linksys wrt54g router. I'm trying to connect my desktop to the internet via the router via my laptop, however, I run into some problems. When I set my laptop's wireless to "shared" I lose the connection to the router. When I bridge the connections, I lose the internet signal.

So my question is: How do I connect my laptop to the router so that it sends the internet signal to the router, and in turn, I can connect my desktop to the router and use internet?
This can be done, I have done it once, a long time ago, so I don't remember exactly what to do.

try this:

use ethernet cables to connect both laptop & desktop to your router.
assign specific ip address to the ethernet connection on both computers.
on the laptop, set the gateway to the ip address used by ur wireless.
set the ethernet ip address of the laptop as the gateway on the desktop.

good luck!

(hope that some people who are more knowledgeable than i am will come and chime in on this thread)

[edit on 4.23.10 by toreishi]

tried the above, my laptop has access to both the internet, and my router, however, the internet is extremely slow and sometimes doesn't work.
the desktop has access to the router, but no internet, it doesn't even seem to find my laptop on the router..
it seems like it might have something to do with a setting in the router, I'm sure this would be sooo much easier with a cross-over cable...btw the computers are a long ways apart, I have to connect the desktop via wireless...does that make a difference?

Ok, I think I can get it working if I can send the wifi signal from my laptop into the "Internet" port on the router, the only thing is, I don't know how to do that...help?

[edit on 8/3/06 by Spidermonk]

Nevermind, found out that I needed to send the internet signal from my laptop into the WAN port of the router, then I went into the router's advanced routing section and set it up some weird way, not exactly sure what I did anyways, but it works...thanks.

Go to the Linksys site,the instructions are there for your router