Dumb question about net connection sharing

[Tannin]

OK, what do I need to do to get another machine to share my Internet connection?

Connected machine:

Win 2000 SP 2
Modem link
Internet connection sharing enabled on my dial-up link (tick box)
Realtek NIC
Plus an X-over cable


Other machine:
Win98SE
Realtek NIC
Installed protocols:
TCP/IP (LAN and dial-up)
NetBUI
Microsoft Networking
File sharing

I have an ordinary connection going just fine - I can see each machine from the other, access drives, whatever. Just can't acces the web from the W98 box.

Obviously, I've missed something. (PS: never done ICS before - in case you can't tell from the above.)


Note: the only thing this other machine will be doing that needs a web connection is Folding@Home.

 

[Tannin]

Cancel all that.

It's working now. I have no idea why. I didn't do anything! Just typed this post and ... when I went to look at the other machine, it decided to work now.

 

[Mercutio]

What you needed to do, for future reference, was run WINIPCFG on the 98 box, then do a Release/Renew. It'd find the ICS quasi-DHCP server and take an address from that instead of the APIPA address it had been using.

 

[Tannin]

So why did it work anyway?

(Pause to ask yourself, before replying, "would the TCP/IP challenged Tannin understand this answer?")

 

[Mercutio]

Can't say I've ever done ICS from Windows before (only NAT), but I think there's probably a method for overriding the default IP configuration for non-static clients on the LAN with the ICS machine.

 

[P5-133XL]

So why did it work anyway?

(Pause to ask yourself, before replying, "would the TCP/IP challenged Tannin understand this answer?")

I don't know but I suspect that the release/renew timer elapsed and the W98 box requested and got a valid DHCP IP address. After that it worked. Note, with DHCP, it could have been the DNS or the GW addresses that were invalid, and were updated with the DHCP IP address: They can also be transmitted.

 

[Mercutio]

ICS is supposed to be brain-dead simple to set up. So like I said above, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if there's a software method to override client configuration.

My books (I have lots of books) don't really give a good explanation of exactly what ICS does, exactly. You set it up, then magic happens and packets get forwarded.

 

[Tannin]

Thanks guys, I understood at least some of that. Gradually, I'm getting a few of the fundamentals under my belt. Very gradually.

Tonight I couldn't connect from the remote machine again. (Tea was going bananas at me.) Tried that WINIPCFG thingie (thanks Merc), didn't make much sense of it. Eventually I wondered if it was because I was using a different ISP. Thought to check what DNS it was using - but (a) I seem to be able to have the wrong (i.e., different ISP) DNS entered in my work boxes and they go just fine, and (b) when I checked I found that the DNS tab in the TCP/IP settings notebook was already disabled. So that wasn't it.

Then I remembered that I had only enabled ICS (on the 2000 box that has the modem) for the Dingo Blue, not for Primus. So I went to enable it for Primus as well and discovered that if you enable ICS for ISP A, it automatically disables it for ISP B. Huh? Seems like a pretty stupid way to do things.

Oh well. Dingo Blue closes up 5:00 PM Friday, so it won't matter too much after that.

(And I finally got the #2 machine's results in.)