I have 2 NIC 's in my main computer, which is connected to the internet through a cable connection. It has currently 1 ip in-bound to its mac address, however i'm having 5 more coming in-bound to it soon. I am also getting a linksys cable router to sit between my main computer and the internet. I want to know how i can pass the surplus ip addresses to my internal computers, without using NAT or port forwarding etc. I want complete and unrestricted internet access for 5 computer behind my main computer or router. main computer - 80.7.72.157 (ext ip) - 80.9.75.1 -> 80.9.75.5 (ext) - 192.168.2.1 (int ip) I want to pass or route the surplus ip-s to my other computer. Hope someone can help, James

I'll give an example to make sure I understand what you want: Supposing you have webservers on each of your five computers, you want anyone in the world to type in http://80.9.75.1/ and connect thru your single cable connection to your computer which has internal IP of 192.168.2.1 Additionally, antother guy could type in http://80.9.75.4/ to also connect thru your single cable connection but to the computer which has internal IP of 192.168.2.4 Don't you have to pay lots of money for 5 IP addresses? ========================================== According to this site what you want can be accomplished with simply a hub (or switch). However, this setup does not provide protection from hackers unless you use some software firewalls. By the way, there are different flavors of NAT. The most common (with routers) is mapping multiple internal IPs to one external IP--clearly you don't want this. However, NAT can also map each internal IP to a distinct external IP.... I hope this info helps you in some way.

Sorry if my fist post was long! Are you saying that you will have a total of six different IP addresses "associated" with *one* NIC MAC address? I think you would want your internet service provider to give you a different IP for each NIC on your network. (You can easily "spoof" a MAC address in the future, if you need.)

Thanks for your help!! I'm not sure how much multiple IP's cost from NTL, or if they do them at all. But i assume it would be quite expensive. My hope is at the moment, that someone from http://neptune.aswwc.net/membership/ will get back to me soon. It is a college project, who say they are willing to route ip addresses to you for free, when you join their club!! I'm getting a linksys router, with 4 port switch. (linksys befsr41) If i plug the internet into one of the switch sockets, and not the WAN socket, i should be able to accomplish my needs!! I have thought about the situation more now, and NAT is probably a better option. However, if i was providing a broadband internet service to some of my neighbours etc, i would use the switching method. The problem with the NAT solution, is that you cant provide all computers with video conferencing! etc etc. I think thats why my school said they were gonna have vid conf in the languages department, but it never happened!! Thanks for your help, oh and do you know how to get ip addreses routed to me, but not from my isp, i'm not sure if that college project will get back to me! James

Is this a theoretical project or is this actually going to be implemented. Personally, I wouldn't even consider doing this type of setup with a Linksys DSL router. To accomplish what you want, you should buy a business class router such as one of the Cisco 2600 models.

This is only a theoretical proposition! I have spent a lot of time setting up various servers and network configurations, i'm just wanting to see if i can actually provide a broadband style service to an internally networked computer, with complete unrestricted access to the net, no firewalls etc etc. Thanks for your help, i think i understand how to do it! Oh and i've created a method of gaining extra i-p's from your isp's dhcp server for free! (using smac) Only problem i think i'm gonna have is that the set top box, which my network must go through, only seems to allow 1 i-p address to routed to me!! but when i get my switch/router from Lsys, it might work!! Anyway thanks for your help James