Windows 2000 Quick Fixes

Share a single dial-up Internet connection with other users on the LAN

Windows 2000 offers a very useful feature called Internet Connection Sharing, or ICS, that lets you share a single Internet connection with other users on the network. This is particularly useful in a small office or home office environment where you need to share a single dial-up account among several users. Sharing the account can save you the cost of a direct connection or multiple dial-up connections when the bandwidth provided by a single connection is sufficient for your network’s needs.

Configure ICS

Configuring a dial-up connection to use ICS is easy, but there are a few critical steps to ensure that the other systems can use the dial-up connection. The first part of the puzzle is to configure ICS on the computer where the connection exists. Windows 2000 automatically assigns the IP address 192.168.0.1 (subnet 255.255.255.0) to your computer when you share a connection. See Section 10.4.2 to learn how to avoid connection problems caused by this address change.

Follow these steps to share a dial-up connection:

1. Open the Network and Dial-Up Connections folder. Create and test the dial-up connection to make sure your computer can dial and connect propertly.

2. Open the properties for the dial-up connection and click the Sharing tab.

3. Select the option “Enable Internet Connection Sharing for this connection.”

4. If you want the computer to automatically dial the connection when another user attempts to connect to ...