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Free Software Based Routers or Internet Sharing for Two Laptops for Win 98SE

Rison

Senior member
Can it be done? I have two notebooks, two pc cards, a cable modem, cables, and a hub. Possible? Internet Connection Sharing from MS insists on two network cards. Please help me. Thanks a lot
 
Im almost positive you will need 2 network cards to be able to do this. Get an old POS machine, throw OpenBSD on it, and I will give you configs for IPF and IPNAT
 
Can't. This connection is for friends (two girls) and they just want to use Windows. nothing else. Thanks though.
 


<< Can't. This connection is for friends (two girls) and they just want to use Windows. nothing else. Thanks though. >>



Oh no, not girls. Anyhow, they can get a second pcmcia card (if one of the notebooks supports it), but the best bet is to use an external machine. You can get a hardware "router" like the linksys ones, or a seperate POS machine running NT/2k and a proxy server like Wingate.
 
Like I said before, two GIRLS. And they'rein a dorm room. A Proxy Server and them together in a room wouldn't go. Would you recommend any free solutions?

 
Do they have an open pcmcia slot? If so then they can stick 2 nics in one machine and use that as the gateway.
 
You've got three options:

(1) Get a cheap . . . $50 or so, machine and put LRP (Linux Router Project on it) and just share that out. Put as little fans as possible in it and hide the machine under a bed.
(2) Put a second nic in one machine and share out access.
(3) Buy a commercial hardware router.

Other than that you're pretty much SOL.
 
get rid of the hub, spend the $$ and buy an SMC barricade. It will be a 5 minute setup if you already had the two machines properly networked. I did the same thing this week. Took out my hub and hooked all three of our PC's up to the barricade, used DHCP on all three machines. Hooked the printer to the parallel port on the back of the barricade, installed the print server software, and in maybe 5 minutes all three machines where back on the network and able to print to the shared printer without being reliant on any of the other machines running in order to print. The next day the cable guy came, installed the cable modem, and I plugged the cat 5 cable from the ethernet port on the cable modem to the port marked "WAN" on the barricade. Presto, all three machines had internet access. It even works with my company's VPN setup, so I can work from home, and it is fater than the token ring connection I had in my office. The barricade provides a level of firewalling, and if you want more protection, you can download zone alarm for free. It is so simple and fool proof that you can't go wrong with this solution.
 
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