Question about sharing Cable connection and Security

[Cougar]

Hey everyone,

I'm sure you can tell by the title of the message what my question is so here goes. I've got two computers in the basement. My main system is connected to a cable modem and my second system I use mainly for gaming and backing up my main system. Right now I have no internet connection sharing software of any sort so only my main system has access to the internet. Now here's where I need some help.

My sister is getting a computer in her room and she wants to share my cable modem and I need some help getting it going. I already bought 2 netgear phoneline networking cards and here's how I want to set it up:

Computer A (my main system which used to have exclusive control over the cable modem): This computer wil keep the NIC it already has and nothing will basically be changed.
Computer B (my old backup\gaming system): I'm going to stick 1 of the phoneline NIC's and a second Ethernet NIC (for the cable modem) and use this to share the connection.
Computer C (my sister's computer): I'll stick the 2nd phoneline NIC in here and connect with computer B.

Now that I've got my layout out of the way, I'm wondering what would be the best way to go about sharing my connection. I have 98se and I was considering using ICS to share my connection, but is it secure at all? I know absolutely nothing about sharing an internet connection so I'd like to use something that is both easy to use and at least a little bit hacker-proof.

 

[obenton]

www.grc.com

 

[Cougar]

ummm.....I'm at the site but I don't see anything of use. I checked out the "probe my ports" and test my shields, and I glanced over the stuff about personal firewalls, but I'm still not sure what I need to do. If I get a firewall will it share the connection or will I have to have it (the firewall) in addition to the internet sharing software?

 

[Twilling]

Honestly, i don't think your configuration will work. If it does, get at me.... Anyway I think you will have more success installing a 2nd NIC card in the computer with the cable modem. Then get you must get the internal network working between your sister's computer and the other computers. You can get the slow TCP/IP but go with the speedy netbiue setup. Just install it. After you get successful pings between all the computers, enable ICS on the NIC card attched to the cable modem. On all other computers ensure your TCP/IP is set for auto detection....
Another alternative people always talk about is purchasing a crossover cable and attching you cable modem to a hub. even getting the cheap Linkis router/switch broadband access device is a viable solution...

 

[Eug]

Yeah, maybe I'm not understanding you correctly, but it also seems to me it won't work, or at least it won't if you want to use the first two computers you listed at the same time and your cable modem doesn't support multiple IPs.

This is what I do. It's more secure than what you're envisioning, and you don't have to have a specific computer on all the time, but it might be a bit too expensive for you.

What you might want to do is connect your cable modem to your main computer and then put a HomePNA NIC in that, and then a HomePNA NIC in the other 2 computers. The problem here is that the main computer would have to be on all the time and you'd have to buy another HomePNA NIC.

Where are the computers physically located, and which computers do you plan on keeping on all the time?

As for security you can probably just run ZoneAlarm (free) or something.

 

[BCYL]

www.grc.com is a site to test the security of your PCs... so after you got everything up and running, you can go there and check out how secure your PCs really are...

 

[joemama]

I have a similar setup with 2 computers, Win2k/WinME on a cable modem and a Linksys 4 port router to a NIC in each machine and I can have either or both computers on and accessing the internet through the router with the firewall enabled by the TCP/IP address forwarding of the router. The router is on 24/7 so there is no need to keep a computer on for the internet access. The ISP see's the 1 WAN address only. You could get a 1 port router with a hub and achieve the same thing. I just set the TCP/IP properties in each machine to get them to see each other. Linksys tech support can help with that if you go that route.
With this setup you can achieve total stealth status at the Shields UP portion of the GRC.com website. For instance if someone pings me, no answer is sent......kind of like a black hole in that regard. Usually pinging for open ports will return a "open/not open" message . So the existance of the port is indentified.
The cheapest security is Zone Alarm at GRC . Read their FAQ .

Hope that helps.

 

[Cougar]

Twilling.....


umm...I think I sorta messed up my description a little bit. Here's the way I have it laid out now:

Computer A (my main system): 1 10/100 NIC
Computer B (old gaming backup system soon to be used in sharing the connection): 1 Phoneline NIC, 2 10/100 NIC's
Computer C (my sisters system): 1 Phoneline NIC

I have been fooling around with ICS a little bit, but I can't get it to share the connection with both computers. I have to choose which NIC I use to access the network so if I pick the Phoneline NIC then my sisters computer can share the connection and my main system can't, and if I choose the second 10/100 card then my main system can share the connection but my sisters can't. Obviously this does me no good so I'm sorta stuck.

 

[Cougar]

Eug...

sorry for the misunderstanding.....forgot to add that my second system had 2 ethernet nic's and 1 phoneline nic. I checked out your setup and it is going to be a little bit too expensive for me. Oh and to answer your question, my main system and my backup/gaming system are located in the same room in the basement and my sister's computer wil be upstairs in her room. Also, I'd like to use my second system to share the connection to the 'net since I don't mind keeping that one on 24/7 (it doesn't have as many fans as my main system so it's not as loud).

So it sounds like I'm going to have to buy a third phoneline NIC, which I don't mind doing but I've got one question. I've got my main system and my backup system connected together via a 10/100 switch and I'd like to still use the ethernet connection between them to transfer files back and forth. If I throw in a phoneline NIC in my main system then would all my file tranfers be going over the phonelines and not my ethernet cards? Am I making any sense? I ralize that my main system wouldn't be able to transfer files to my sisters system via ethernet, but I don't really care about that. I just want to at least keep my fast connection between my 2 systems.

If I just don't bind file and print sharing to the phoneline NIC then I should be ok, right? And speaking of binding things, what exactly would I have to have bound to the phoneline NIC's? Can it be just NetBEUI or would I also have to have TCP\IP bound?

Sorry for all the questions, but as you can see I'm still a little bit hazy on the details.