At work, we have a simple network of about 7 computers connected in a ring with coax cable. One computer is connected to the internet via a cable modem and shares this connection with the other computers via the coax network. We would like to be able to bring in laptops that can utilize this internet connection, but haven't figured out how to do it yet. We tried plugging the computer with the internet connection(via a second nic card using ethernet)into a hub to share it's connection. By using the nic card built into the laptop, we were actually able to use the internet connection by plugging it into the hub. The problem is, when we plug the internet sharing computer into the hub, we lose the internet connection on all of the other pc's that are part of the coax network. It seems to be either or, but not both. Is it possible to simultaneously have a closed loop coax network that also plugs into a hub via ethernet, so that laptops can plug into the hub to utilize the coax network's internet connection?

Although there may be hubs which support connecting Coax and Ethernet cables in simultaneously, there are other ways to accomplish the task of enabling a laptop to connect to your network (and use the shared internet connection without interfering with the other computers' internet connections). A possible solution would be to install the extra ethernet adapter into one of the serveral computers on the network, and then set up that computer to share it's internet connection to that adapter. Then you may simply hook up a switch to that extra ethernet adapter and connect the laptop to that switch. I understand this is only accomplishable if one of the several computers is running an OS which supports ICS and supports the type of slot which the extra ethernet adapter connects. Another solution would be to have the gateway computer (the one connected to the cable modem) be only on the ethernet network via the hub. Then assign one of the other computers to be the 'Bridge' between the ethernet network and the Coax ring. This would be accomplished by having the bridge computer get it's internet connection from the ethernet network, and having the bridge computer share it's internet connection to the Coax ring. In this situation, the laptop could simply hook up to the ethernet network via the hub for internet access. The downside of this is that the several computers (other than the bridge and the gateway) would not be able to directly access the gateway computer (and vise versa) without some form of special network software or setup such as port forwarding (this may be accomplished with NetworkActiv's free port forwarder, NetworkActiv AUTAPF, available at the URL below). This setup requires the same resources as the previously mentioned scheme. Best regards, NetworkActiv, http://www.networkactiv.com/