Bigpond ADSL On Your LAN

This is how I've gone about setting up Telstra ADSL on my home network. I have to give credit to various people who gave me advice on the Bigpond newgroups. The most relevant newsgroup is bigpond.broadband.tech.lan. If you can't get your network running with ADSL then this is the best place to ask questions.

My gateway computer is running Win98SE using Microsoft Internet Connect Sharing (ICS). There are several others PCs on the lan running Win95 and Win98, all connected through a hub. I have two NICs installed on the gateway machine, one for the network and the other connected to the ADSL modem.

I've completely scrapped the Telstra ADSL software as I couldn't get it to work with ICS. Instead, I've used RASPPPoE that you can get from http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~normanb/. This software comes highly recommended from many satisfied users, and best of all it's free. With RASPPPoE you install Microsoft's Dial-up Networking, the same as you would if you were using a 56K modem. The provides the same interface that you are likely to be familiar with.

Firstly, install the ethernet adapters for your two NICs and make sure that both cards are configured properly with no conflicts. You will also have to install the Dial-up Adapter as well as ICS.

The internet uses TCP/IP protocol, so you have to install that. But for my non-internet file sharing I've used the Netbeui protocol. You could use TCP/IP instead, and I've heard arguments either way. Netbeui doesn't need any configuring and there isn't much that can go wrong. I've heard arguments that TCP/IP (for network filesharing) is a security risk, but ICS isolates your network so the argument isn't really relevant.

Download the RASPPPoE software and follow the instructions to install it on your computer.

So now you should have four network adapters showing in your network configuration, one for each of the network cards, one for dial-up networking and one for ICS. You should also have four TCP/IP protocols installed, one for each of the adapters. The IP address for the network card that goes to your LAN will have been set to 192.168.0.1 when you installed ICS. You will need to set the IP adress for the network card that goes to your modem to a fixed address. You can set it to 192.168.1.0 with a submask of 255.255.255.0. This is important. If you leave it to obtain an IP address automatically, your internet connection will have frequent 30 second delays. The other two TCP/IP protocols for the dial-up adapter and ICS should be set to Obtain an IP address automatically and to Use DHCP for WINS resolution. On the DNS Configuration tab, select enable DNS and put vic.bigpond.net.au in the domain suffix search order. (I believe this setting may differ according to your location). You will find that configuring the DNS on one TCP/IP protocol will end up putting the same settings on all four TCP/IP protocols.

Under Internet Properties in the Control Panel, click the Connections tab and the Sharing button. Where it says Connect to the internet using: make sure it says dial-up adapter. Where it says Connect to my home network using: it should have the name of the network card that connects to your LAN.

The setup on the client machines is much simpler. There's the adapter for the network card along with TPC/IP. The TCP/IP should be set to Obtain IP address automatically, Use DHCP for WINS resolution and Disable DNS. You might also have Netbeui installed for network file and printer sharing. Don't forget to enable file and printer sharing.


Links

Cableguy

Windows 98 Annoyances - Setting up Internet Connection Sharing
Practically Networked
How to Install Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) - InfiniSource, Inc.
Internet Connection Sharing
Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) Questions
How to Troubleshoot Internet Connection Sharing Problems

 

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