I suspect this is a very common Question

[flatstan]

I
I purchased a couple of PCI 10/100 LAN cards & a Xover cable from a computer fair. In order to connect two computers & share a cable internet connection, but it does not seem to work.
Both computers are quite modern & running Win XP Pro, they are side by side. Both have a RJ45 Lan port (Ethernet connector) on the back panel, which goes on to the motherboards. I have a cable modem, with one (Ethernet) RJ45 connector, which when connected to each computer individualy works well.
I have fitted one LAN card to each computer & installed the driver, device manager shows that they are both working OK.
I connected the cable modem to the main (master)computer's Lan (ethernet) port, & connected the two new Lan cards together with the Xover cable. I then ran the XP Network Setup Wizard successfully on both computers, setting one as the master & one as the slave. I ran the wizard 3/4 times with variations but each time the master computer connects to the internet OK but the slave computer does not. Books say that once the master is setup, then when running the Network Setup Wizard on the Slave the shared connection should be automaticaly recognised, considerably shortening the proccess, but this does not seem to happen. In network connections all ports are shown as connected & working, except the backpanel LAN (ethernet) port on the slave computer, which of course does not have a cable connected to it. If I take the cable coming from the cable modem, out from the master computers Lan port, & then put it into the slave computers Lan (ethernet) port, then the slave computer connects to the net OK.
Is it possible that the Xover cable is faulty, I checked the plugs & the colours are swopped on them, so it should be a xover, also on checking the continuity with a meter they seem fine. Have I made the connections correctly? Where have I gone wrong. Any sugestions / help / hints welcomed. Thanks. :roll:

 

[JackMDS]

And the reason that you do not get a Cable/DSL Router is?

:sun:

 

[dnoyeb]

i dont understand your setup. Your main computer has 2 network cards, one going to modem, one going to other computer?

You could have probably bought a broadband router for the price of that extra network card and you would get a quality firewall and NAT too and wouldnt have to keep that main computer on all the time.

 

[flatstan]

Thanks for these replies. Reading books, Internet/MicroSoft articles, etc, I learnt that connecting 2 Win XP computers to share a Broadband connection, required only a Xover cable & 2 NIC cards, then running the XP Network Setup Wizard, & thats what I did. The BB Modem goes directly into the main computer, the LAN(NIC) card on the main computer is connected to the LAN(NIC) card on the slave computer with the Xover cable. As you pobably can see I am a complete novice with Networking & have just followed the instructions that I found in books & on the net. Are you saying that I should install a Router & dispense with one of the NIC cards, how would I do that ?

 

[nweaver]

make sure the slave computer is set to "DHCP" it's ip address, and use the command prompt to check the IP Address. It should probably be something like 192.168.0.2. Check that and tell us what it returns.