Peer-to-peer internet sharing

[Lschulz]

Hi everyone,

I have a network set up at home consisting of one Win 2000 machine, one Win 98 SE machine, and a cable modem. I managed to get the network working fine with printer/file sharing by reading previous posts in this forum.

What I want to do is share the cable connection so that only the computer accessing the internet has to be on, or both computers can access it simultaneously. I have the cable modem plugged into the uplink port of my D-Link hub (as the manual recommends). My cable company provides two IP addresses with the connection, so I figure this should be easy. And yet I can't seem to figure out the trick to it.

I can access the internet from only the Win 2000 machine. I'm able to change network settings on the Win 98 machine to get internet access, but I run into a lot of problems with IP address conflicts if the Win 2000 machine is turned on.

Can someone please tell me how to set up two machines?

[JackLothian]

Talk to the cable company? Presumably different DHCP addresses should be supplied to both machines. If you are having conflicts somehow the assignment must not be working. Why this isn't happening is hard to tell.

My bother does this by multi-homing his Win98 machine & running ICS on the the Win98SE machine but he is limited to one IP address.

A couple of points, if you truly have 2 IP addresses it doesn't make any difference which machine is left on since both would be accessing the net independently. Neither is dependent on the other. You realize with this setup if you try to share files between the 2 machines you are also opening the same sharing possibilities to everyone else on your IP subnet mask. (i.e. every other cable user on your local node.)

By the way this isn't one of these new router /hub combinations that act like a DHCP/NAT server is it?

[Lschulz]

Thanks for the reply.

The cable company's tech support won't offer any help when it comes to networks -- they will only confirm the connection is working on one machine...

Independent connections: that's exactly what I want to do. As far as security goes, I don't know much about restricting any shared resources to only my two machines. I've gone on the assumption that Zone Alarm Pro (which I have running on both machines) is the solution. Is that a wrong assumption to make?

And nope, I'm not talking about a router/hub combo. Just a plain old 10/100 5-port hub, and a Motorola CyberSurfr modem.

Any ideas?

[This message has been edited by Lschulz (edited 02-26-2001).]

[JackLothian]

If they give you a cold shoulder on networking it is highly probable you do not have 2 IP addresses being supplied to you. I believe this is the same modem my brother has. He can only get one IP address through it.

I suspect this is your problem, You must use DHCP to communicate with your ISP but you can only get 1 DHCP IP address through the modem. Thus when you try to run 2 computers through it you get IP collision.

You say you are installing the hub as recommended by the manual. Yet this approach will not work with most cable or DSL ISP. In most cases you must place the hub inside your local network not outside.

You need 2 NIC in one machine. Attach one to the cable modem & the other needs to be attached to the hub. This your gateway computer. You need to install a NAT or proxy on this gateway to get it to act like a router.

You misunderstand what I was saying about where you are placing the hub. The way you are trying to place the hub you are effectively trying to use it to broaden the cable companies local node. Thus effectively it as if the 2 machines are in 2 different homes trying to talk through the cable. The other machine plugged into the hub is no closer or further away from you than the next house in your neighbourhood. Zonealarm can help but it would take a lot of manual setup that needed to be updated each time you logged on. You see your "local network" would be your local node on the cable system. i.e. your local & external networks would be one in the same.