Cat42

I'll try and keep this short and simple....

Basically had Telewest Broadband set up on one PC at home but also used this on another PC (by taking note of the IP Add, Subnet Mask, Gateway, etc.) and connecting up the modem. I'm assuming they have blocked me from doing as it does not work any more!

What is the best way to set this up so I can use broadband on my PC as well as the other one? The PCs are about 20 feet apart.

Thanks in advance.
ST.

IanW

What operating system are you running?

Do you want a software or a hardware based soloution??

suba

you can share your broadband connection. one PC will be the host. to enable it, you need ICS (internet connection share) which is part of win98se, me, w2k and XP.

you can either connect up the two PC directly with a cross over cables (both PCs will need NIC) or connect it up to a switch/hub.

or you can opt for a router, therefore your host PC dont have to be on to share the connection.

Cat42

Thanks for the advice...

Running Win98 on the host PC and W2k on mine (but upgrading to WinXP). Have NICs in both PCs.

If I opt for the router will it renew the connection? On the host PC it is fine whereas on mine it just blocks the signal.

How does the ISP know which PC it is to allow for a valid connection?

Regards,
ST.

BigGT3Fan

Cat42,

Telewest uses the MAC address of your network card (unique id that every network adapter has) to identify a PC that has connected so that it knows when to allocate you a new IP Address, and, indeed, whether to allow the PC onto the network in the first place.

When you were first connected to broadband, Telewest would have taken a note of the MAC address of your PC, so I don't really understand how you could ever have just connected a second PC to the cable modem without registering its MAC address with them, but that would be my suggestion as to why its not working now. You need to register the MAC address of the other PC.

You can either register additional MAC addresses yourself on their website (up to 5, I think), or call them up and tell them the address. (Type 'ipconfig' into a DOS prompt to get the MAC address.

Alternatively, rather than registering the MAC addresses of the individual PCs at all, (useful if you have lots of PCs, or varying ones, say you bring laptops home from work, for example), you can use a router and register the MAC address of just that with Telewest, which is what I do.

Suitable broadband routers have been discussed on here many times, Netgear, Linksys (what I have), and many others.

The router gets the IP address from Telewest, its MAC address is registered with them, and the router gives out internal network IP addresses to my PCs. This network address translation (NAT) process also works well as firewall protection.

HTH,





Alex

Cat42

Cheers Alex,

That sounds like the perfect solution for me (router). Will look into getting one this coming week.

All the best,
ST.

dsmith

Try BroadBandbuyer for broadband routers. mention Scoobynet for 5% discount....

Deano