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Internet Access on a LAN

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by kkrawford

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I'm involved with providing IT help to a non-profit organization. I don't do IT for a living - it's just a hobby.
Presently the organization has 6 workstations on an XP Pro peer to peer network. We want to provide DSL internet access for only 2 of the workstations.
My questions:
1. How can we provide access to the 2 stations and exclude the other 4?
2. I assume that we will need to replace our 10/100 switch with a router. Is this true? Any brands that would be suggested.

Thanks in advance.
Ken Krawford

3 replies

by ccollins

If you replace your switch with a DSL router you will have to configure the router to only allow the IPs of the two machines you want, otherwise everyone gets internet access. An option could be to get additional network cards - you could get two cards to for the two machines to link to the outside individually, so you have one internal and one external interface, or you could put a second network card in just one and configure Internet Connection sharing. Connect one network card to the DSL and one to your internal network. Depends on your budget and technical skills.

by juliogarciagarcia

Just one little detail that ccollins left behind.
If you have a router you don't need to configure it to allow access to specific computers. Is easier if you just configure the computers that you want to have access to internet with the correct ip address of the gateway (router) and the others computers with a blank space instead. The effect is the same but the knowledge required is significative less.

by johnsmith

Netgear has a couple of DSL modem/routers that will allow you to specify which machines are allowed out within their built-in firewall settings. And since it has the DSL modem built in you only need the one device. Linksys's broadband routers will do the same thing but are a bit more complex to set up since they have to co-exist with a separate DSL modem.

You don't need to replace the switch, just plug it into the router's uplink port. Since you already have a switch you don't need to spend the extra money to get an 8-port model.

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