I’ve got a peer-to-peer LAN at work consisting of (mainly) NT workstation machines. One machines has a direct Internet connection. Today it occured to me that I would like to access the 'net from one of the other machines. I went to Control Panel/Internet Connection and got a dialogue box that offered the option of connecting through a LAN, but when I hit the “Connect” button, nothing happened.
Anybody know what I need to do?
That dialog box assumes that your LAN has a router providing connectivity to the Internet – simply having one machine on the network without any kind of proxy or connection sharing services won’t do it. For your network, either install MS Proxy Server (although configuring that one is a bitch) or some other WinNT connection sharing software, or set up a Linux box doing basic firewalling and NAT.
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I won’t be able to dig into this until I get back to work. Is MS Proxy Server something I’ll find on my NT CD or is it an add-in? If it is something I have already, do I install it on the machine with the 'net connection? If I don’t already have it with NT, and if it’s a bear (as indicated), what software should I acquire?
Regrettably, MS Proxy Server doesn’t come with the base NT Server 4 CD – if you don’t have the Back Office Suite 4.5, it’s (urk!) a $900 add-on. You might want to check out this Winfiles.com page for some more reasonably priced NT proxy sharing software. I have no personal experience with it, but I’ve heard nice things about WinGate.
Personally, I’d do it with a Linux box, but if you’re new to Linux in particular, and UNIX in general, getting ipchains working properly is not going to be a happy fun start with it all.
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
Actually, if he’s just got NT Workstation on all the machines, installing Proxy Server is going to mean reconfiguring one machine as a server.
Just another headache, but actually not that complicated.
About 18 months ago, I downloaded a piece of shareware called WinGate, and that did the trick in a flash. (Okay, takes a bit of setting up, but the manual is pretty easy to follow). A friend of mine uses the professional version to run his small ISP and has nothing but praise for it.
Perhaps it’s worth checking ?
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WinGate is indeed the answer. It’s what we use at my work (I work for an ISP) almost exclusively, for precisely what you are asking for. I do not have a link (I’m the web design guy, not the tech-head), but it wouldn’t hurt to try www.wingate.com to start with.
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Wingate rocks.
Go to www.tucows.com and download the shareware version. Good for sharing an internet connection between 2 machines. To add more clients, you gotta buy the real version.
gEEk
I should have mentioned that you can find Wingate on the Tucows site in the NT Software category under Modem Sharing software. Or you could just search for “wingate”. That works too.
gEEk
If you like a lot of pretty blue screens, you can use Windows SE with the Internet Connection Sharing, which is free…
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WinGate is pretty darned good (I use it at home and at my wife’s office). There are a few security holes (sorry, I don’t have the list here).
You might also want to look into BlackICE Defender, which is pretty darned simple to set up as long as you don’t want to do something difficult like play games over the Internet. (Gibson fans: the source of the “ICE” part of the name is not oficially known). I get 10 or more probes per day at home …
Gibson Research is a good site for a quick check of your security and a discussion of security issues.
jrf
I tried to use that, on the advice of a friend who was running a copy of the third-party version from the company (in the town wher I live) from which Microsoft bought the software that became SE Connection Sharing. Unfortunately, it appears that Microsoft tried to make it impossible to screw up the setup and, in the process, broke it. I suppose it works somewhere, but it refused to run for me unless NetBEUI was bound to the shared connection and I couldn’t get NetBEUI to bind to the shared connection (nor did I really want NetBEUI available to the world fom my machine). So I gave up on it.
WinGate. Not painless, but very good.
jrf
I use Jana Proxy (also in winfile.com) at home. Pretty good with no user limits. It is very easy to configure, although to configure email I had to go to the web to translate the French email documentation.