Sharing @Home Cable Modem???

[hnc420 0]

I looked through the old posts on sharing cable modems and they all say the same thing. Which is to go into Network and Dial-up Connections and right click on the connection and goto properties, then the sharing tab. well the Cox@Home service doesn't setup a dial-up connection and the only icon in there is a Local Area Connection icon. when i click on that it gives me the properties for my network card (TCP/IP, NWlink IPX, and etc.) and there isn't any sharing tab. How else can I share the cable modem? Cox@Home has given us 3 IP addresses which work fine but we can no longer see each other on the LAN. I think I need to setup a server but I'm not sure

 

Thanks,

 

HNC

 

other info:

 

OS is win2k final. The cable modem is connected directly to the hub. We have 4 PCs and an extra network card if we need it.

[Beavis 0]

Here is how I did it:

 

Put 2 NIC cards in one machine. Now take the cable modem and hook it into one of the NIC cards. Take a line and hook the 2nd NIC card to the hub.

 

You should now have all 4 computers hooked to the hub and 1 hooked into the cable modem.

 

You should be able to use internet connection sharing on the 1st NIC card. (The one that goes out to the cable modem)

 

Hope this helps.

[hnc420 0]

Thanks for the info. We actually got it setup and running, but my roommates think it will slow our connection down. I'm not sure if it would and they wouldn't stop *****in' so we hooked the cable modem up the hub again. Currently only 2 of us can play CounterStrike online at a time. Since we have four PCs I was thinking that we could us the 4th PC to serve a game then we could all join. Would that allow us all to play?

 

Also, is there anyway we would all be able to see each other on the network if cox won't allow us to use file and printer sharing?

 

HNC

[Beavis 0]

You don't have file and print sharing enabled?

 

I have found that the people at Cox@home have absolutely no clue as to what they are talking about. As a matter of fact I had my modem die on me a couple of weeks ago and the tech that came out said he had only seen a couple of computers with Windows 2000 on them. I had to show him how to set it up. (Now that is scary)

 

As far as games go, I have my one machine set up with 2 NIC cards and hooked into the cable modem. (Like I described in the earlier post) It has the computer name that Cox@home gave me and I have different accounts on it (1 for me and 1 for the wife). I then have my machine that is hooked into the hub and it is named whatever I want. I just had to make sure that my workgroup was @home. My wife can see me, I can surf the web through her machine, we play games together all the time, and there is very little degredation of speed on the net.

 

Heck, most sites are slow anyway, I have found that I will never use all of the bandwidth that I have with a cable modem and I highly doubt that 4 machines will do it either. Give it a shot and have all 4 of you surfing and see if it slows anything down. Post your results because I am curious myself.

 

Thanks.

[hnc420 0]

Thanks for the help. We are alpha testing the Cox@Home service in our area so the problem with the bandwith could be due to that. We don't notice any slow down when we all surf the web...its only when 3 of us try to play games at the same time.

I have a couple of other questions though. If I install both NICs in my machine and use ICS so the other PCs can connect to the net will that slow down our connection? If we all turn on file and printer sharing will everyone in the @home network be able to see our PCs?

 

Thanks again,

 

HNC

[Preatorian 0]

Since you have 3 IP addresses from the cable co, there is no reason for you to need to enable ICS, and indeed you shouldn't, since many games and apps don't work well through ICS wihtout special configuration. Instead, just plug the cable modem into the uplink port of the hub and the other 3 PCs into the other ports of the hub (I assume you already did this, yes?).

Then, since each machine should get its own IP address each one should work fine and should be able to access the internet/games/etc. The only cases in which you need to use ICS is if you have less IP addresses available than you have machines which need to be connected to the internet.

If you enable File and Print sharing on the PCs then you should be able to see each other and share files as long as you are all in the SAME workgroup and have DIFFERENT computer names. Most (good) cable modems block port 139 (which is used for file sharing) so you should not have to worry about your whole neighborhood seeing your PCs, but just in case you should probably set it as Read-Only access or set a password.

 

Also, about the slowness you are experiencing when all 3 of you play games, it is most likely due to your hub. Since it broadcasts each packet to all 3 of your computer and to the cable modem, many many collisions will occur which will force packets to be re-sent and thus slow down all of your games. The only way to fix this problem would be to replace the hub with a switch, although that would be a bit more expensive.

 

I hope this is the information you were looking for...

[hnc420 0]

That is how we currently have the cable modem setup. I was trying to setup ICS because we do have 4 PCs but only 3 IP addresses.

 

Would I get better performance from games online using ICS? Or would it be better to setup a server? Also how much is a switch and where could i get one?

[Preatorian 0]

Ahh yes I see I misread your original post, and that you are trying to map 4 comps to 3 IPs. So you have a few options then...

 

1) Buy an extra IP address from cable co (which IF they let you do it, would be about $5-$7 extra per month)

 

2) Set up ICS (or any other type of NAT like sygate) and use it to masquerade the IPs of all the internal computers except one. Unfortunately this comes with many problems as most games do not work properly through the ICS gateway and so you may only be able to play on 1 or 2 comps at a time (which is not good).

 

3) Keep the setup the way you have it, and run a server on the machine without a real IP address. This way all 4 people would be able to connect to the machine BUT nobody from the internet would be able to play on your server.

 

4) Run the server on one of the machines with a real IP. This way people from the internet would be able to connect to the server, but the 4th comp without a real IP would not be able to (I think).

 

These are about the only options as I see it, but perhaps someone else may be able to shed some more light on it...

 

And regarding the switch, you can pick one up at www.buy.com pretty cheaply (look in the network products area), but I am still not quite sure if the hub is what is slowing you down (could be a bad network card or somethin)

[ThC 129 0]

well a side note here...

 

if your trying to play games on a cable modem with more than 1 person on the cable modem it will LAG BAD!! Your better off getting dsl if its available because DSL unlike @home isnt full of oversaturated nodes, not giving you high pings when you play games.

 

As for the IP problems put 2 nics in one machine then get winroute

[Dragon-Lord 0]

I beg to disagree.

 

None of these games use more than 20kbytes/s at maximum bandwidth. I have run three Q3A machines through the same cable modem and noticed negligible ping increases (10-15), which I attribute to ICS overhead, not network or cable modem issues. My cable modem (mediaone LA) maintains consistent transfers of 150-200kbytes/s so this does not seem unreasonable. My network is 100base through hubs, dual NICs on the ICS machine.

 

So, I'd say try the ICS solution and see if you notice a problem. If it doesn't, all it takes to disable under W2k is a clearing of one checkbox...

 

:}

[hnc420 0]

Well I ran into a little problem. Like I said we have 4 PCs but mine is the only one with win2k. The PC that I want to enable ICS on is an AMD K6-2 266 with 64MB SDRAM runinng win98se. I thinking of installing win2k on that machine but I thought win98se would run better. So I installed 2 3Com NICs on that machine then enabled ICS. My PC can't see any other PC on the network except itself. The AMD PC can't see anyone and the other 2 PCs can see everyone. I don't understand how that is possible. It doesn't make any sense. Needless to say ICS didn't work. I tried to manually configure the other PCs by specifing the IP address of the AMD PC as the gateway. Nothing seemed to work. I've got a couple of questions. Why can't my PC, with win2k, see anyone on the network? Would I better off installing win2k on the AMD PC? How do I manually configure ICS on the other PCs? What should be selected for primary network logon?

 

Thanks for all the help.

 

HNC

 

 

Other info:

 

File and printer sharing is installed on all PCs. We're using 192.168.0.X for the IP addresses and 255.255.255.0 for the subnet mask. Both IPX and TCP/IP are installed on all PCs along with Client for Microsoft Networks.

[HarU 0]

I ran into a problem like that once....but it isn't that bad. The server can't see the others in network neighborhood right? Well, try hosting a game anyways and see if your PC's can see the game.

 

Mine was able to still connect to games even though it was not in Network Neighborhood.

 

Hope this helps.

[hnc420 0]

But the other PCs can't even get online so I wouldn't be able to connect game.

[hnc420 0]

Well I ended up installing win2k on the AMD PC. ICS is working great and we even get a better connection speed. I was also able to serve a Counter Strike game and have all 3 PCs join. Thanks for all the help ppl.

 

HNC

[Arin 0]

Here is what i did.

 

I have dsl, and it is basicly the same as cable.

 

Get a linksys dsl/cable router. On buy.com they are about 150.

 

With the linksys router, you plug your modem into it, and then you plug your eithernet cards to it from all the different computers.

 

It is fast and easy, and best of all, if you were to shutdown the computer everyone on the network is not affected like with the 2 nic solution.