Hello everybody,
some of you may have done this before: Make one Internet connection available to all machines on the network, without running a dedicated server.

First, a few facts about my network setup:
I have two machines hooked up to the network. There is a hub that is up-linked to my dsl-modem, which both machines can use to bring up the Internet connection. When one computer is on-line the other cannot bring up the connection.

What I would like to do is this:
When either machine is online, it should be possible for the other to attach itself to the same connection.

Problems that I can think of:
I cannot have a dedicated server, i.e. both computers should be able to do the same thing.
When the connection is brought down on one computer, it should not be dropped on the other.
If this is at all possible, I would like to do it without spending too much money on more equipment.

Please post any ideas on how this could be done. They may sound crazy!

Thanks,
- drowstar

What are the gateway ip settings of your two computers?

Both machines need their gateway addresses to be set to the ip address of your dsl-modem.

Hi okmyx,
thank you for your reply.
Are you saying that this could work with the existing setup, had I only assigned both the correct gateway address?

What would the gateway ip of the dsl-modem be, or rather, how would I figure it out/set it? I am sorry, I dont seem to have a good understanding of how network stuff works. If you have some time to spare, can you explain, how the modem interacts with my pc? also, are you certain, this works for a modem? (I dont have a router.)

Thanks again for your reply (and for any additional ones),
- drowstar

When you said 'the hub is uplinked to the dsl-modem' do you mean that its a ethernet hub and a ethernet dsl-modem or is it all usb based?

Hi okmyx,
Its all ethernet. Both computers are connected to the Modem over the hub. It works perfectly well for only one active connection.

Thanks again,
- drowstar

My best advice is to invest $40US in a ethernet router, it really is the best way to go without doing a gateway.