Sharing internet connection

With the Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) feature of network and dial-up connections, you can use Windows to connect your home network or small office network to the Internet. For example, you may have a home network that connects to the Internet by using a dial-up connection. By enabling ICS on the computer that uses the dial-up connection, you are providing network address translation, addressing, and name resolution services for all computers on your home network.

To enable ICS on a network connection:

In Control Panel , double-click Network and Dial-Up Connections.

Right-click the connection you want to share, and then click Properties.

Click the Sharing tab, and then click to select the Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection check box.

If the connection you are sharing is a Dial-up connection and you want the connection to dial automatically when another computer on your home network attempts to use external resources, click to select the Enable on-demand dialing check box.

NOTE : To enable ICS in Windows, you must have administrative rights.

IMPORTANT: You should not use this feature on a computer running DNS server or DHCP server or a Windows domain controller. When you enable ICS, the network adapter connected to the home or small office network is given a new static IP address configuration. Existing TCP/IP connections on the CS computer are lost and need to be re-established.

Configuration and Usage Issues:
The ICS feature is intended for use in a small office or home office in which the network configuration and the Internet connection are managed by the Windows-based computer on which the shared connection resides. It is assumed that on its network, this computer is the only Internet connection, is the only gateway to the Internet, and that it sets up all internal network addresses.

You cannot modify the default network configuratio

Hi,

Maxwell seems to have covered how to set it up... but to answer your other questions...

When you set up ICS on a machine, the IP address of the machine is set to 192.168.0.1

Assuming you dont have DHCP set up on the server, otherwise you wouldn't have staic IP addresses...?

The ICS machine will automatically perform NAT for you and you may either set static addresses in the 192.168.0 network or if left dynamic, the ICS machine will automatically allocate them using its version of DHCP. On a server, that may or may not be full DNS... I haven't tried it...

I believe the allocated addresses start at 192.168.0.2 and go from there.

Either way, you're probably going to have to alter the IP adresses of your current machines unless you've luckily picked the right network!

Oooh... but looking at your setup again ... You may be able to configure the Win2K server as a router and route to your existing network. I wouldn't recommend that, though. Win2K is not a particularly efficient router...

Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Tim.

I would not bother with ICS.

Look into one of the little routers that are built for sharing broadband. It seems that you don't have broadband available. That's OK. Some of these boxes (notable Asante "LC" model) include a port for a straight analogue modem. The idea is that this can be used as your backup in case your DSL/Cable falls down. I've set it up for a dial-up always (just to see if it would work) and it was fine.

For all of the systems you have, you will also need a small expansion switch, as the basic router only comes with 4 10/100Mbps. Add an 8-port to this.

You can continue to use your own IP addressing scheme inside the router. The router will perform NAT using the IP address provided by your ISP.

Comment: You will find that sharing a dial-up among this many system will be PAINFUL. But with this setup, you are ready to go to some sort of broadband. Good luck.

ICS is nasty!!

I recommend you take a look at www.tinysoftware.co.uk (WinRoute Pro). It's not too expensive ($299 for 10 users), is easy to configure and has full firewall functionality. There is also a 30 day demo available for a look if you want!

It will allow you to keep your current internal network range, it will NAT to the outside interface (modem in this case).

Each workstation would use the WinRoute Server as the default gateway.