How To Enable Internet
Connection Sharing On Windows
Internet
Connection Sharing On Windows With A Dial Up Modem Is Possible
And Easy To Set Up
If you are currently connecting
to the internet using a modem and you don’t have
broadband, well hurry up and get it! Actually I understand
a lot of places don’t have it and it can sometimes get a little
pricy. So if you have to use a modem, you can in fact share
that modem and do internet connection sharing with others
on your home network.
If you want to
do this under windows you do this under what is called “ Internet
Connection Sharing ” now one very important point here is
that you want to make sure that when you set up the Internet
sharing connection using a dial up modem, you do not
put a router on your network.
Remember the router
is something that's going to be able to assign Internet addresses
and act as a DH PC server and if you do Internet connection
sharing the computer on the home network that contains the
modem and shares the modem out, will now act as your DHCP
server. So you want to connect all your other computers through
Ethernets cables and a hub or switch. If you have to have
a router on the network for some reason, then be sure
to disable the DHCP option on the router.
Now, to do
internet connection sharing and share out the connection,
go to start button 
click control panel, click network connections. Then you have
your dial up connection listed there and it is important to
make sure you are disconnected while you set this up.
Right-click on the icon for your
dial up connection to get its properties (shown above), click
properties, click the advanced tab.
Now two things on this window to
note:
First there is"
Internet Connection Firewall ", if you're
going to do internet connection sharing and you have lots
of computers operating through this computer on teh home network,
I recommend you have your firewall on even if you're only
dialing up to the Internet. This is the equivalent of having
a firewall on the router providing some protection for your
internet connection sharing between your local are network
computers and the Internet at large. It's not a firewall within
your network so it won't interrupt file sharing.
Next, right below that is " Internet
Connection Sharing ". It says "allow other network
users to connect through this computer’s Internet connection”
-- check that box.to enable internet connection sharing on
your computer.
Next on this window
is “Establish a dial up connection, whenever
a computer on my network attempts to access the Internet”.
Now think this one through a bit, what this is saying is that
if this is enabled, and some other computer on the network
wants to do something that requires a internet connection,
for example they want to check their email, well with this
enabled, that will cause your computer (the one with the modem)
to dial up using your modem and connect. If you want to have
tighter control over when someone dials up, for example
you only have one phone line, then you might want this box
unchecked (disabled), otherwise the other computers on your
home network can dial any time they wants to and possible
tie up that one phone line.
And the last option is “Allow other
network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection”.
If you want to manage everything available in internet connection
sharing directly from your computer, and that's a good idea
then you would NOT check this box.
Now just click
OK and a couple things will happen; it will take a moment
so be patient but you now see that the dial up icon has a
hand underneath indicating that internet connection sharing
is enabled and you also have a lock on the icon showing that
the firewall is enabled on this internet connection.
A third thing has happened, if I
go to your local area network status, then go to support tab,
it now says "Address Type“ = "Manually Configured” and the
IP address assigned to your computer should look familiar
to you, we saw it before when we were looking at the routers
and gateways. That is because internet connection sharing
is enabled on your computer and your computer is now
acting like the DCHP server instead of a router.
In other words, you computer is now acting like the operating
and handling all the connections.
Again, your computer will now act
as a server and it will assign addresses to every other computer
that logs onto your network and they will get something in
this range 192.168.0.only it will increase the last set of
numbers by one for each computer that join your home
network.
What has happened
is basically Windows has created a bridge between your local
area network connections and the internet network or WAN enabling
internet connection sharing. The bridge exist really between
your Ethernets plug on the back of your computer and your
phone jack going out to the Internet. Make sense? Not
that it has to make sense as long as it works right? :-)
So now because
of internet connection sharing, messages come from your home
network, into your Ethernet card and then they go
out over the modem to the internet and your computer's
handling that connection. Then data coming from the Internet
to the modem is bridged over to the Ethernet card and back
to the computers on the home network
That's basically
how it works; right now if any other computer in the network
wanted to check their email or surf the internet, they will
be able to share that internet connection with you. Or if
you have enable it so that they can dial up then when they
check their email it will automatically dial up from
your modem!
So that
is it, you have internet connection sharing enable
and you can now share your internet connection with everybody
else on your home network.
Important…
This would be a great time to encourage you to seriously think
about getting virus protection for you home network computer.
Sharing files can be a fast way to spread a virus throughout
an entire network and so you should install a good anti-virus
software package on each of your computers. Below is the one
I use plus a couple others that come highly recommended by
some friends of mine. Believe me, it is better to do preventive
maintain here and save you a whole lot of headaches!
McAfee Virus Scan
Shield Virus Protection
Computer Associates
Antivirus
Zone Alarm Antivirus
The list is not in any particular order of importance; they
are all good and come highly recommended. Good luck!
Now a
couple of other important notes:
- If you need
more help navigate from our home
page and follow the links that fit your need
- Book mark
this page http://www.best-home-networking-solutions.com/internet-connection-sharing.html
in case you need to return for a reminder
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