Two-way ICS

[yukichigai]

I've finally gotten around to setting up a network at home, and so far it's going mostly good. However, I was thinking about setting up Internet Connection Sharing between the computers. Now I know how to do it so that the connection on one computer is shared between the two but I can't figure out how to do it so that the other computer could share a connection as well, not necessarily at the same time but certainly without having to restart.

Basically what I'm looking for is either a) a way to have both computers connected to their own dialup accounts and share the bandwidth between them as needed, or b) a way to have either computer use the other's internet connection automatically if the computer isn't connected to its own dialup account.

Anybody?

Oh yeah, I'm still running 98SE sadly, though I'm in the process of tracking down a copy of 2000. If it isn't something that can be accomplished in 98SE I'll be able to do it in a few days with 2000.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Each computer's network card would need to be configured so that its default gateway is the other computer's network card. Anytime the dialup connection isn't available (you should be able to simply disable the dialup account to force it), the computer should then pass the traffic to the other machine, whose dialup account will be active, so the ICS service should then work as normal. Then when you need to switch, you just disable the dialup account on one, and enable it on the other.

I don't really know if that WOULD work, but I can't see any technical reason for it not working. Except that ICS does define which is an internal and external interface, so it may prevent the traffic being sent over the network that way. There also of course isn't any way to "share" the bandwidth of the two connections, your machine will only use one connection at a time without extra software which wouldn't work very well sharing a dialup line over a network.

 

[sydLude]

I tried this before and couldn't get it to work
When I enabled ICS on a computer, windows will set its IP address to 192.168.0.1 automatically, and of course you can't have both computers using 192.168.0.1
If there is a way to change this, I'd like to know too

 

[papichulo1968]

to change the ip on the other pc just go to metwork properties for that specific pc, under the control panel and go to conections, there u can go ahead and change the ip to 192.168.0.2 and up, just make sure that on this computer the gateway is set to the ip of the one that conects to the internet(192.168.0.1) after this you should also make sure the pc also wont try to dial, just make it so it does not dial a conection, this pc will use your network adapter to go in to the net as long as the other one is already online. if everything is set right u should be able to just click on the internet explorer icon on the desktop and just go online.
hope mthis helps.
if you have windows xp, just run the home network wizard on both computers and it will do all the modifications for you, very sweet. I beleive win 98 se also have an ics program to set up a home base network.