ICS CONFIGURATON for XP


On the server PC, view your network connections (you can find this in Control
Panel). There should be displayed the Internet Connection and the network card
that you will use to share to the rest of the computers. Right click the
Internet Connection and click 'Properties'. Click the 'Advanced' tab and you
will see halfway down the option to 'Allow other network users to connect
through this computer's Internet connection'. Check this box and then in the
drop-down box labelled: 'Home networking connection' choose the network card
that is connected to the other computer (which should be associated with IP address 192.168.1.1).  That should do it.
(This also setts up DHCP so that you don't even have to deal with IP address(s) if you don't want to, but since we've designated the range to be 192.168.1.x, we know exactly where it is. )
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That is it! The conection is now shared to the Secondary PC. Hooking up an additional PC is fairly simple, plug into a hub, (or just use a crossover cable), go into the properties of the
network card on each Secondary or client PC and set the TCP/IP settings to 'Obtain IP
address automatically' and 'Obtain DNS server address automatically'. Now the
client PCs are configured to ask the server for a network address when
they turn on.

NOTE: For everything to work properly, the Primary or server PC must be up and running
before any of the Secondary PCs are turned on. The Primary PC must be
available to assign the Secondary PCs their network address.


You can use a hub or a crossover cable. If you only intend to use two
computers, the crossover cable is better and simplier.

You can buy one for $5 or so, maybe less, like $2 or $3, or you can make your own:
http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/crossover.html

There's not much to it and as you can see from info at above site, all you
have to do is switch a couple wires and yer good to go, but it's a bit easier to just buy one.