Anyone know how to set up dial-up ICS under Win2K?

[packman 0]

Does anyone visiting this forum truly know how to successfully configure two Win2K machines, connected as peer-to-peer, to connect to the Internet via a 56K dial-up modem using Internet Connection Sharing? I've tried configuring in all sorts of ways but the best I can achieve is a very unstable arrangement where static addresses 168.192, etc are used. Microsoft's publications seem to suggest that if you set up ICS in the Share tab of TCP/IP Properties, it allocates those particular static addresses, anyway.

 

I call my two machines the gateway and the client. In order to send/receive mail from the client, does an ISP account also have to reside on the client? And does that account have to be installed to 'connect via a LAN'? I would have thought so, but nothing along these lines seems to work. I've tried automatic addresses and I've tried static addresses but neither setup works. The ISP connection on the gateway is configured for TCP/IP and is left to detect the addresses automatically.

 

After several weeks work on this, I've practically given up, as at best (using static addressing) the client rapidly times out before the gateway's had a chance to dial out and, at worst (auto addresses), the gateway generates APIPA addresses (169.254, etc) but then cannot seem to find a server and nothing happens. I have to admit I'm totally confused by this.

 

There's nothing wrong with the LAN itself, as file and printer sharing works perfectly. Also, the two machines 'see' one another when I activate My Network Places.

[mezron 0]

Couple questions...

 

1. Which ISP?

2. How are the computers connected? Crossover cable or hub? Are you using any othe DHCP server devices on the lan?

 

Ok.. more than a couple questions but anyways :x

 

On both machines set the TCP/IP to obtain address automatically. On the gateway machine configure your internet dial up as you normally would (you've probably already done this). Assuming your ISP will allow you to just use the built in dial up networking that Windows provides, you should be able to right click your dialler and chose properties. In there go to sharing, and enable shared access. If you're using AOL, Earthlink (with thier software) Juno, or anyone else that installs thier own dialler... you're hosed, give it up at this point. If you ever get it to work it'll be like pulling teeth to keep it working.

 

If all is well to this point reboot the client machine. The ICS software in Windows creates its own DHCP server. The gateway address should be 192.168.0.1, the client after rebooting should be 192.168.0.2 (automatically assigned by gateway). If the address is 169.254.x.x then look to communication between the two machines.

 

If you are just using a cable to connect the two, verify that you are using a crossover cable. If you are using two cables and a hub, make sure neither cable is a crossed over cable. Check also that you don't have one of the computers plugged into the uplink port on the hub.

 

Hope this helps!

Jim

[DS3Circuit 0]

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/ics/ics.htm

[packman 0]

First, thanks DS3, but I've already tried out the info at THAT website and, frankly, it was useless. I've tried many others also but they too turned out to be useless. They're usually cribs of older guides on ICS, referring to Win98/ME. Some of them are just plain wrong.

 

Mezron,

 

The ISP isn't really relevant, just to say that I'm with a fairly reliable major ISP but certainly not one of the likes of AOL, Earthlink or whatever. I wouldn't touch those with a bargepole. I've been with my ISP for nearly three years and, on the whole, the service (subscription) is reasonable. My account, which I configure manually on my machine (the one I now use as the gateway machine or server), works fine and is optimumly configured as a 56K dial-up.

 

I've configured the two machines for ICS precisely as you've described but the setup simply doesn't work. I've also tried an arrangement where I allocate static addresses and where I use the primary and secondary DNS addresses of my ISP but, although I could "kinda" get that to work, the client would still time out and it'd take several launches of IE from the client to finally download anything to it. Also, the whole static setup was basically unstable and the client would spuriously dial out via the gateway.

 

I'm not using a hub, I'm using a crossover cable. It's definitely the correct cable. It took me ages to find an e-retailer with the one I wanted. It's by Belkin and it's even got "crossover" written on it. Also I've checked out its wiring. As I say, file and printer sharing works with no problem at all.

 

Okay, the ICS software creates its own DHCP server, but where exactly should it register that server, ie in which tabs? Also, you say "If the address is 169.254x.x then look to communication between the two machines". What do you mean by that, exactly?

[mezron 0]

Quote:

Okay, the ICS software creates its own DHCP server, but where exactly should it register that server, ie in which tabs? Also, you say "If the address is 169.254x.x then look to communication between the two machines". What do you mean by that, exactly?.

You won't really see any tabs where the server is registered so to speak. You could look in the services section of computer management to see that "internet connection sharing" is enabled (not disabled I hope). The easiest way for me to see the ip of the network cards is open the command prompt and type in "ipconfig /all" minus quotes. Generally when windows can't find a dhcp server to get its ip, it reverts to 169.254.something.i forget so if it's using that address on the client machine then either communication between the computers is bad, or the dhcp server function of ics is hosed.

Can you do anything else between the two computers? share files, etc.? (Still trying to establish that we have a good network connetcion between the two computers with this question)

Quote:

My account, which I configure manually on my machine (the one I now use as the gateway machine or server), works fine and is optimumly configured as a 56K dial-up.

The only thing to watch for is did the isp use any software, or does it just use whats built in to windows already. the windows ics doesn't work with 3rd party dialers (my experience anyway).

[mezron 0]

just occured to me... you're not using zone alarm or any other firewalling software are you? that could throw a wrench into things 8)

[packman 0]

Mezron,

 

Suggesting that the "connection is bad or hosed" doesn't really help, I'm afraid.

 

Yup, I can share files, no problem. And I can print files from one machine to the other, no problem.

 

Yes, I do run firewalls. However, I've run my experiments many times with the firewalls completely disabled and it made no difference. In any event, I've got the known range of LAN addresses configured into the trusted zone of my firewalls.

 

Someone not in this forum, who's never personally set up ICS, has suggested that I might be misunderstanding ICS in that I'm expecting the client to be able to initially dial up the Internet connection via the gateway machine. It CAN do this, I've found (you can watch it happening), but the client then times out before it's had a chance to get online and download anything.

 

So, have I been misunderstanding how ICS should be used from Day One? Should the gateway machine always be already online first? That would certainly fit with the more general expectation of employing DSL and cable modems these days (always on modems).

[mezron 0]

Quote:

Yup, I can share files, no problem. And I can print files from one machine to the other, no problem.

ok... knowing that helps. connection is not hosed what does ipconfig /all show for ip addresses on both the systems? it's a show stopper if one of the machines does not report 192.168.0.*

Quote:

Someone not in this forum, who's never personally set up ICS, has suggested that I might be misunderstanding ICS in that I'm expecting the client to be able to initially dial up the Internet connection via the gateway machine. It CAN do this, I've found (you can watch it happening), but the client then times out before it's had a chance to get online and download anything.

yes, in the internet options (control panel) run the connection wizard on the client machine and go the "connect through lan" route. On my lan I've found this to be a double edged sword. If the client machine has aim, or weather bug or something else running at boot that tries to connect to the internet to update or whatever then the gateway machine constantly dials up. I turned the client can initiate dialler off after about 3 1/2 minutes Personally I find it less frustrating to initiate the dial up manually then let the other computer surf through mine.

Quote:

So, have I been misunderstanding how ICS should be used from Day One? Should the gateway machine always be already online first? That would certainly fit with the more general expectation of employing DSL and cable modems these days (always on modems).

I don't think you're misunderstanding anything. It's just not the most intuitive thing to do until you've done it a couple times.

[packman 0]

Well, thanks for those comments, Mezron. Since my last reply, I've swapped back to using auto addresses throughout. However, what happens there is that initially ICS causes automatic assignment of address 192.168.0.1 to the gateway (and thence the next address to the client). But when I reboot, I find (by running ipconfig) that those addresses are transformed into APIPA addresses and it's then impossible to dial out to the Internet. This seems to be confirmed by something I read in the UK PC World magazine, where under a section on Windows 2000 local area networking, it stated:

 

"For small home and business networks, APIPA provides hassle-free automatic network configuration most of the time, but it can only be used on networks that aren't connected to the Internet".

 

Today, I've changed back all my settings to static ones. With ICS still confgured, I find I can now use ICS with the DNS address of the client set as 192.168.0.1, which I couldn't do before. Mind you, this is now starting dial-up from the gateway, not from the client. Before, with static addresses, I could only ever download anything from the client machine by having the ISP's DNS addresses entered in the DNS address box of the client. That seems perverse, as why should external addresses ever work like that INSIDE the LAN?

 

There remains the problem of spurious dialing out from the client. The only way I can think of stopping that is to disable Enable On-Demand Dialing, in the Share tab of the ISP connection. I've now done that. It's kinda contrary to the whole point of ICS but then, as I say, I've never been able to get ICS really properly working. I suspect that using a 56K dial-up modem has a lot to do with it. Instead of expecting to log on and log off the Net from the client, I'm resigned to doing that always from the gateway.