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Sharing an internet connection


hellknight

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I have a cable connection for this pc. Basically its a cable connection and the cable modem is connected via a lan cable to my LAN Card. Now i want to share this internet connection with another pc at my place. So how can i achieve this? Shud i try installing another lan card on this pc and connect it to the other pc? In this case what shud be the settings i would be needing to do?

chao!

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Can you guide me what this is and how this works? and why cant i just plug in another lan card and connect to my other pc?

It's much easier and simpler to get router. It would work, but theres far much more effort and risk involved then there could be.

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Um... do I have to state the obvious?

-He's using wires, so wireless is very much out.

-Assuming the cable modem and the PC are connected by a patch cable and not a crossover, the modem has a DHCP server.

-Going by the language used, he's not that experienced but is looking for an easy guide. Nothing fancy or costly.

So we don't need a router OR a wireless gateway. Geez, people...

My recommendation is to buy a little box called a "switch". You can get an 8-port switch for $20-30, usually. You plug the cable modem into the switch, then get as many network cables as you need, and use them to plug your computers into the switch. Voila, shared internet to more than one person.

Now, your other question. The reason you can't put in another network card and connect it to another computer using a regular cable is pretty simple when you think about it. The cable has different wires for different things, but you can just think of them as SEND and RECEIVE. When you connect two computers together with a REGULAR cable, the send and receive wires don't match up. However, there's another kind of cable called a CROSSOVER cable, which has the wires on one end switched around so that the send and receive wires DO match up. They're "crossed over", which is where the name came from.

The crossover cable is useful for two people sharing the internet, as it's going to be far less costly than a switch, but once you get three or more people it's very inefficient and costly (two cards per PC as opposed to one, apart from the guy on the end of the chain)

NOTE: when i say "plug in" i mean with a regular network cable. Not a crossover.

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Um... do I have to state the obvious?

-He's using wires, so wireless is very much out.

-Assuming the cable modem and the PC are connected by a patch cable and not a crossover, the modem has a DHCP server.

-Going by the language used, he's not that experienced but is looking for an easy guide. Nothing fancy or costly.

So we don't need a router OR a wireless gateway. Geez, people...

My recommendation is to buy a little box called a "switch". You can get an 8-port switch for $20-30, usually. You plug the cable modem into the switch, then get as many network cables as you need, and use them to plug your computers into the switch. Voila, shared internet to more than one person.

Now, your other question. The reason you can't put in another network card and connect it to another computer using a regular cable is pretty simple when you think about it. The cable has different wires for different things, but you can just think of them as SEND and RECEIVE. When you connect two computers together with a REGULAR cable, the send and receive wires don't match up. However, there's another kind of cable called a CROSSOVER cable, which has the wires on one end switched around so that the send and receive wires DO match up. They're "crossed over", which is where the name came from.

The crossover cable is useful for two people sharing the internet, as it's going to be far less costly than a switch, but once you get three or more people it's very inefficient and costly (two cards per PC as opposed to one, apart from the guy on the end of the chain)

you do know that if he uses Cable DHCP and hooks up a switch only one computer at a time will be able to use the modem because it will only release 1 IP address.  So you DO need a router, and getting a router like the WRT45G would allow him to most simply get all the computers he wants working and with better security. you can also do as I suggested before
if you REALLY REALLY want to can get get another NIC and a 'twisted pair (crossover) cat6 (or 5) cable' but not the best idea and it NOT upgradeable in anyway
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Edit my quote down to the bit you have a problem with please. It's rather long.

And no. I, personally, have never seen a cable modem only lease 1 address out at a time (I'm GUESSING that's what you're talking about.), and even so that should be fixable in the modems settings.

EDIT: I'm currently using a cheap ADSL modem, and it's doing what i described just fine...

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And no. I, personally, have never seen a cable modem only lease 1 address out at a time (I'm GUESSING that's what you're talking about.), and even so that should be fixable in the modems settings.

Your ISP would have to assign you modem another IP or  second or third , you can't do that yourself.

A router would be the quick simple logical solution.

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Cable modem -> switch -> multiple PC's won't work, this is due to CPE limits placed by your ISP, assigning static IP's won't help. All your PC's will need public IP's as there is no NAT in this picture.

Cable modem -> PC running ICS -> switch -> multiple PC's will work, as the first PC is taking the place of a router, with NAT.

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... Oh wow. And I thought I had it bad :/

? It does depend on your kit, but if your talking about a simple unmanaged layer 2 switch my suggestion is the easiest way to do it. The box running ICS can be anything, just as long as it routes the traffic between the WAN and LAN connections. In my expirence, cable modems do not have a DHCP server (routers do, not your modem), which is why your kit needs to talk to your ISP's dhcp server to get an IP.

A simple test would be to run ipconfig /all on said PC, if the IP is 10.x.x.x, 192.168.x.x or 172.16.x.x-172.31.x.x then you are behind NAT and can simply stick a switch in. If its anything else, you have a public IP and will need to use some form of NAT to share your connection (unless your isp supports multiple CPE's).

Also, aren't most NIC's auto-crossover these days?

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