um... i have the post on this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...e-soon-693298/

and it says

hi all

i have a laptop and a desktop pc i would like to connect together using a crossover network cable. at the moment the most i can get is a few spikes of transmission of the network, but thats it. for reasons i cannot release on this forum, only the desktop pc can connect to the internet. what i would like to be able to do is connect to the net from my laptop, through the dekstop pc. is there an easy/working way i can do this (hopefully graphical) where the desktop pc acts as a sort of server for the www. if anyone gets what i mean...

anyhow, thanks in advance for any help i receive

james waples, 14

ps. i posted in the wrong section sorry admin!

Are you using windows, linux...

jamwaffles,
Please don't post the same Q in more than one forum.
Mods, please merge.
Thanks

yeah.. sorry about that

both machines run on linux, ubuntu 8.10 and the dekstop has intel ethernet and the laptop has realtek ethernet (not that it makes much difference, but anyway)

james

ps. quite dumb of me to exclude that info, but it is a linux forum

Add an extra ethernet card to the desktop machine and use masquerading.
You can find more info using google, on how to establish this.

thanks for that, but whats wrong with using the motherboards onboard (intel) ethernet?

you need 2 networkcards to do masquerading

Nothing, however as a previous poster stated you're going to need two nic cards to be able to have the laptop connected at the same time as the internet.

[internet]-[router]~~~[nic1]-[computer]-[nic2]~~~[nic]-[laptop]

You may have two built in nics in your computer, a lot of modern motherboards do.

ok lol i have two nices now, one as a PCI card. now what? do i look on the internet for a good guide and if so can u give me a few links or the commands to do masquerading. if its something else, please say.

thanks for all your help up to now!

Knowing the distribution you're intending to use would let us give specific information for a particular distribution also... (edit: cough, yah, I can read today.)

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/IP-Masquerade-HOWTO/

Is very specifically what you need, however it's definitely not a short quick guide, but for a shorter version... try:

http://www.revsys.com/writings/quicktips/nat.html

A lot of this post on the ubuntu forums is useful and applicable:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=111972

In addition there are these sites...

http://www.howtoforge.com/ is a good general site for linux tutorials and http://www.debian-administration.org/ is a great resource for debian/ubuntu specific tutorials.

A good google search would be for linux, nat, ipmasq in some combination.