OK. First to the basic stuff:
You first want to physically build up you LAN:
just plug the computers into the HUB. you should have some cables that fit into the ethernet-cards and the hub. Otherwise get them.
I assume your other machines are running windows? You need to set up the ethernet-cards according to the manual. Shouldn't be that big of a problem.
Now you should actually already be able to "see" the other computers on the network. Have a look at the network neighbourhood..
I would recommend setting up a tcp-ip network with static ip-addresses, though. I'll explain that in the following:
Afterwards you need to check the properties of your network (right-click on your desktops network icon)
If not already done, install the tcp/ip protocol for the ethernet-adapter. You can also delete all other protocols, since they won't be used...
It will speed up things a bit if you assign static ip-addresses within your LAN. To do this, go to the properties of the tcp-ip-protocol and fill in the information...
use addresses in the form of 192.168.0.x where x is a number from 1 to 254 the addresses have to be unique within the network!
Set the subnet-mask to 255.255.255.0
Now you should be able to ping the computers in your LAN. Try going to a dosprompt and typing ping 192.168.0.x where x is a number you assigned to a computer on the network, which is up.
You probably first want to try the address of the computer you're on.
You should get an output like
answer from 192.168.0.1: Bytes = 32 ...
Now try the other ones. If you get this far: congratulations, you just set up a windows LAN! If not, look through the previous steps and read some in the windows manual. Or post any problems here.
Now to internet connection sharing:
You will need some part of hardware that is connected to the cable modem and lets its internet be used by the other computers. You can use a PC or a hardware-router to do this task.
If you use a PC you can use the windows ICS which comes with Win98SE and later. This makes it pretty easy to share your internet-connection with others. For this, you only need to hook up your windows-machine to the internet and to the LAN as above, then install ICS and follow the wizards to share your internet-connection!
Or you may use a linux-box as router. In this case you will have to hook up a linux-computer to the cable modem as well as to the LAN and first, get your cable-modem to run and then set up some routing stuff.
If you feel like using some old PC as router, you probably want to look at preconfigured Linux-based routers that fit on one disk such as from
BBIagent NET You just need to fill in some basic information and it will most likely work.
You will then have to set the standard-gateway of the computers of the LAN to the ip-address of the computer sharing the internet-connection. And it should work.
This is pretty basic. Hopefully it got you on the way some.
Steave.
