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How to setup Internet Connection Sharing: Rather than dishing out money for routers, there are some built in tools to share your Internet connection within Windows.
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Sharing an Internet connection is a much more cost effective solution than paying for multiple connection fees. The easy way of doing this is simply going out to buy a router, but Windows 2000/XP already have the ability to do this for you. Best of all, it's free. Windows 2000 ICS Setup - DSL This is a step by step setup of how you get Windows 2000 to use Internet Connection sharing when you have a DSL connection with a NIC going to a hub (or a crossover cable to the other computer) and then having the secondary computer plugged into the hub also. 1. First off, right click on the "My Network Places" icon on your desktop. You will then select "Properties" from the drop down menu. That will open up this window for you: ![]() Now, in this window you should see an icon for "Local Area Connection" and also 1 or 2 (depending on how you're ISP does it) icons for your DSL Modem Connection. In this case, I am using a PPPoE/A DSL connection, so we have 2 Icons. 2. Next, you will want to right click on the DSL Icon with the Telephone present on it, and once again select "Properties" from the drop down window. That will open up a window that looks like this: 3. Now, you should notice at the top of the window there are 5 tabs. The tab furthest to your right is the "Sharing" tab. That is where we will want to go next. Click on the Sharing Tab and it brings you to this part of the window: 4. As you can see, the box next to "Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection" is not checked, thus ICS is not setup to work right now. To share this connection through ICS, simply check that box, and it will produce a window like this: Now this is the important part right here. Notice in the picture above that the box that's highlited "For local network:" is pointed to my Local Area Connection, not to my ATM connection as it was above. You will have to manually change this from your DSL connection to your LAN connection so it will share this DSL out through your NIC to your Hub. 5. Once you click ok, a message will appear asking you if you're sure you want to turn ICS on, as it will set your LAN Adapter (your NIC) to the IP address of 192.168.0.1. Simply click "Yes" and it will automatically setup your NIC's TCP/IP properties to use the IP address of 192.168.0.1 with the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Now, you have successfully shared the connection from your DSL computer to the rest of your Network. Any computer you plug into the Hub and set the NIC for DHCP, will grab a 192.168.0.x IP address and will be able to gain access to the web via this DSL connection. Double check the properties for your NIC to ensure that they are setup correctly to use ICS. At the "My Network Places" Window, Right click on your Local Area Connection Icon and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will bring up a window that looks like this: ![]() Now, to check the TCP/IP settings, Simply double click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" line, or highlight it and then click the "Properties" button beneath it. This will bring you to this window: Your TCP/IP Properties should look exactly like this as well. If they do not, then there is a problem somewhere. Now, to get your Client computers up and working, here is how you do it. Go to a command prompt, if you're using wIndows 2000 or Windows NT, type "ipconfig" at the prompt. It should display something like this: Now, at the prompt type "ipconfig /renew" and it should renew the Adapter to try and obtain an IP address from the DHCP server that is running on your host computer. You should get something like this: Now, what if you have a bridged DSL or cable modem?
Windows 2000 ICS Setup - Bridged DSL or Cable Modem This part is how you get Windows 2000 to use Internet Connection sharing when you have a Bridged DSL or Cable Modem connection with a NIC going to a hub (or a crossover cable to the other computer) and then having the secondary computer plugged into the hub also. 1. First off, right click on the "My Network Places" icon on your desktop. You will then select "Properties" from the drop down menu. That will open up this window for you: ![]() Now, in this window you should see an icon for "Local Area Connection" and also "Local Area Connection 2", once for each NIC you have installed in your computer. 2. Next, you will want to right click on the Local Area Connection Icon (or whichever is the NIC that goes to your cable/DSL modem), and once again select "Properties" from the drop down window. That will open up a window that looks like this: 3. Now, you should notice at the top of the window there are 2tabs. The tab furthest to your right is the "Sharing" tab. That is where we will want to go next. Click on the Sharing Tab and it brings you to this part of the window: 4. As you can see, the box next to "Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection" is not checked, thus ICS is not setup to work right now. To share this connection through ICS, simply check that box, and then click "OK". It will bring up a window like this where you will have to click yes or no: Now this little popup is basically telling you that it will statically assign the IP address of 192.168.0.1 to your other NIC so that it can act as the gateway for all other computers on your network. You are going to want to click "Yes" here to go ahead with sharing ICS. (A word of note here, you might want to check and make sure you don't already have an IP address configured into your other NIC so that everything will flow smoothly during this). 5. Double check the properties for your NIC to ensure that they are setup correctly to use ICS. At the "My Network Places" Window, Right click on your Local Area Connection 2 Icon and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will bring up a window that looks like this: Now, to check the TCP/IP settings, Simply double click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" line, or highlight it and then click the "Properties" button beneath it. This will bring you to this window: Your TCP/IP Properties should look exactly like this as well. If they do not, then there is a problem somewhere. Now, to get your Client computers up and working, here is how you do it. Go to a command prompt, if you're using wIndows 2000 or Windows NT, type "ipconfig" at the prompt. It should display something like this: Now, at the prompt type "ipconfig /renew" and it should renew the Adapter to try and obtain an IP address from the DHCP server that is running on your host computer. You should get something like this: Not everyone uses Windows 2000, so let's move on to setting this up in Windows XP...
Windows XP ICS Setup - Cable Modem This section is how you get Windows XP to use Internet Connection sharing when you have a Cable Modem connection with the computer connected to the cable modem via NIC (1) and NIC (2) going to a hub (or a crossover cable to the other computer) and then having the secondary computer plugged into the hub also. 1. First off, left click on the "Start Button" on your taskbar. You will then right click "My Network Places" and select "Properties": Now, in this window you should see an icon for "Local Area Connection" and "Local Area Connection 2" for both of your NIC's. 2. Next, you will want to right click on the Network Area Connection icon that connects to your cable modem, and once again select "Properties" from the drop down window. That will open up a window that looks like this: 3. Now, you should notice at the top of the window there are 3 tabs. The tab furthest to your right is the "Advanced" tab. That is where we will want to go next. Click on the Advanced Tab and it brings you to this part of the window: 4. As you can see, the box next to "Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection" is checked, however on your computer it will not be checked. Simply check the box and hit "OK" to share your connection through this NIC. 5. Now, double check the properties for your other NIC (connected to your LAN) to ensure that they are setup correctly to use ICS. At the "My Network Places" Window, Right click on your "Local Area Connection 2" Icon and select Properties from the drop down menu. This will bring up a window that looks like this: Now, to check the TCP/IP settings, Simply double click on the "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)" line, or highlight it and then click the "Properties" button beneath it. This will bring you to this window: Your TCP/IP Properties should look exactly like this as well. If they do not, then there is a problem somewhere. Now, to get your Client computers up and working, here is how you do it. Go to a command prompt, if you're using Windows 2000 or Windows NT, type "ipconfig" at the prompt (if you're using any version of Windows from the Win9x family, go to Start/Run and type "ipcfg" and do a renew from the window). It should display something like this: Now, at the prompt type "ipconfig /renew" and it should renew the Adapter to try and obtain an IP address from the DHCP server that is running on your host computer. You should get something like this: And now you're ready to surf the net, get e-mail, instant message, idle in IRC, or play your favorite online games from more than one computer on one broadband connection! Any Questions, send me an and I'll try to help you out as best I can. Ed. Note: You can check out other cool stuff at Wiz's site, (Coming Soon). Thanks to Wiz for the excellent article. |
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