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?
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