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RoboMCduff

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No internet sharing through lan with second nic

We have two PCs at our home-office, and two notebooks. Both PCs and the eldest notebook are XP-SP2. The new laptop is (unfortunately) Vista but has not been connected yet, I want to get the rest working first.
 
Until now, PC-1 was almost permanently connected to internet through an ASUS TI 4631 ADSL modem. This modem has only one Ethernet connection and one USB connection. If we needed internet on PC-2, we had a extra cable laid out to PC-2 and would manually switch cables, that is, take out the Ethernet cable to PC-1 and plug in the cable from PC-2. The computers were not connected to each other by LAN.

We tried running the modem through the USB on PC-1 and use the Ethernet connection on PC-1 to connect to PC-2. However, PC-2 could not see the internet that way. Connecting the ADSL modem to an OvisLink hub did not work either: the PCs could see each other but neither could connect to the internet.

From earlier internet problems with an old computer, I had a functional 3com 905C NIC laying around. I installed this NIC in PC-1 and tried that way. It took some time to get anything working but with the following set-up at least something is working:

- Installed the second NIC in PC-1
- Let Windows Wizard make the connection in PC-1, specifying that the integrated NIC (NVidia) is connecting to the Internet and the 3com external NIC is used for the LAN
- Initially, LAN did not worked, so reconfigured the LAN NICs as following:
     -  IP address PC-1 is 192.168.2.10, PC-2 is &11, LPT-1 is &12 and LPT-2 will be 13
     -  mask is 255.255.255.0
     -  Gate and DNS are both 192.168.2.1
- The NIC connected to the ADSL modem  Internet is on automatic acquire IP address

PC-1 connects to internet and LAN works.

Problems since installing this set-up
- Internet connection is much slower than first, some pages dont work or are timed out (for example, E-E.com works, but half of the times trying to login is impossible.
- Pegasus now regularly gives a connection time out or peer refused connection error.
- LAN works well although initial connecting goes very slow. However, the secondary machines (PC-2, laptop) cannot connect to Internet.  

Probably the two NICs dont communicate properly despite (or because) letting Windows Connection Wizard setting up the connections. Any ideas how to solve this?

Please, don't suggest faulty cables, they and the NICs all work as they should  
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thenone

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ll_jaxn

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Re-reading the article
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_ics/

and starting again from zero did the trick for the moment.

Some comments that might be useful for next users, and still puzzle me.

At start, all computers had "automatic acquire IP address". Starting to build the LAN using a hub,  I let the wizard configure a setup on the Host computer.  LAN worked a bit, slow and only from Host without problems. Internet on Host worked, but on Clients did not. Other forums (here and elsewhere) mentioned that assigning static addresses to computers on the LAN might do the trick, which I tried.

Giving static addresses to ALL computers (Host AND Client) made the LAN work perfect, but Internet behaving badly on Host.  

Reading the article and redoing the wizard, I found that it assigned a different static address to the host computer.

Seeing that, I left that address and reset the Client configurations to "automatic acquire".

Now everything works a treat, although the host is still somewhat slower in accessing internet than before.

Interestingly, the working situation seems to be the same as after the first trial using the wizard, but that trial did not work.