Five Systems, One Modem...

you need something like wingate or internetgate and set it up on the pc with the
modem. internetgate is freeware and I think you can find it at www.tucows.com its pretty easy to setup I use it at home and it works great.

To my knowledge there is no way of sharing a dialup access to the internet without a router of internet server of some kind. Anyone is welcome to correct me if this is wrong. www.ramp.com has several inexpensive solution for the situation you have. We use their webremp 300 at several of our smaller sites and they perform very well.

There are a number of software based Internet Connection Sharing applications in the marketplace. In fact a free, though seriously limited one is included with Windows 95b, Windows 98, 98SE and Windows ME. It is there but I would not recommend it.
The more popular ones are Sygate from www.sygate.com and WinGate from www.wingate.deerfield.com. Both are mature and well designed packages. My preference is Sygate for various features.

Also there are others ranging from shareware to a bit over priced. WWW.TUCOWS.COM is a good source to check some of them out using the Internet Connection Sharing search. Also ZDNet Download Center - www.zdnet.com - is a good source for additional items.

To correct on statement - several of the packages handle dial up modems and dial on demand as needed for connection.

Each of the software packages handles the setup - much along the lines of what your thinking of doing manually. The key would be to make sure that they can handle DHCP IP assignment for the primary connection if the ISP used does not assign a static IP ( which most don't)

While this is a simple thing to accomplish there should be particular care and ADVANCE planning given towards abilities of each for firewalls, access controls at the individual pc level, reporting and recording of activity so as to protect the environment, Religious, that this is being setup in. Some applications only open a channel and this could expose users to the net for a level they are not supposed to be at, or expose the institution to liabilites that could/should have been prevented. A serious consideration.

As to the dial up line, well that is where the real bug will be because of the limited bandwidth that can get sucked up very quickly, even with two machines. Some type of bandwidth control would be nice to have included in the chosen application. Along with associated line quality speeds, etc. A DS

Darn I hate when this thing times out while I am typing away. I posted transient above and if you like it you can accept from here.

Also, again if you need additional info or want some additional ideas. Just send me an email. Happy to help

pschuvie@telocity.com has the right idea but I have to disagree on one thing...I have SyGate and WinGate and use the ICS in Win98SE because it is much more user friendly and I have not found any drawbacks with it. In fact, I would have to say it is by far the most seamless of the 3. I have a 4 machine network here (1GHz, 550Mhz, and 2 500MHz), all running off a 56K modem on one of the 500s. WinGate and SyGate seem to take much more resources to run in the background than Win98SE ICS. Yes, youcan run into a lag if everyone is surfing heavily at the same time, but normally, I don't even notice the lag (except when my son is playing internet games and I have a download or two going). As a general rule, my wife, son, daughter and I all cansurf at the same time without a lot of problems. The greatest thing about the small network is being able to share resources and do most of the maintenance from any machine. For my money, I would just get a copy of Win98SE if you don't have one already. It makes it so simple to set up and maintain it is almost intuitive. Good luck.

TH ebest free solution I have found is ANALOG X PROXY BY... YOU GUESSED IT ANALOG.
IT is very small and extemely easy to set up, you will need a proxy. Why not use a free fully function proxy. Hey it works for me and has never let me down.Good luck

Roy

Point value changed by question poster.
Appreciate all the good answers. Upped the total by 100. I'll let everyone know what worked by Friday.

Thanks Again.

Shawnathon D. Finnie

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