Hi. I need some help. I have recently bought a laptop pc and crossover cable. I want to connect my laptop to my desktop PC. But this is the trick i want to use my laptop for games,surfing etc, i need my desktop pc only to make the connection to the internet (ISDN) becouse i dont have a ISDN card on my laptop. Practicly i need my desktop pc only to be the bridge trough whom i connect to the internet. Can anyone plz write me down what i have to do (network ip etc.) to make this possible, step by step im not so good in networking. Thank you very much.

If you have XP on the desktop PC, ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) is what you are looking for. This has been detailed many times on the Internet. Go GOOGLE!! Rule #1 Good computers don't go down. Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

You can do this with ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) which is built in to XP. All the information you need to setup the ICS connection and get your laptop on the web is contained in the Windows help files, on the Microsoft web site, and all over the web (a google search of "configuring ICS" should yield many links). Go do some reading and research and start trying to set it up yourself and get it working. You'll learn a lot more that way than if anybody here spoonfeeds you the answers.

Ok thanks ill check it out i just needed some roueting i didnt even know ICS exists :)= Ill find my way if i get in trouble ill post again.

Oh oh what is this? ICS is CRAP!!! ICS is a no-no on operational networks! Remember: ICS might ruin your network! If you have computers that are configured with static IP addresses you must now configure them to get their IP addresses automatically, and if you do not do so, they might not be able to communicate with you anymore (or create IP address conflicts). ICS will cause your computer to behave as a DHCP server, and by doing so it will stop the regular DHCP service (if you ever had one running)! ICS will act as a DNS proxy, and will render your existing DNS infrastructure useless (if you ever had one)!!! ICS will ruin your Active Directory (no DNS? No AD!) unless it's run on the Domain Controller itself, but that's something you don't want to do, do you? ICS will not let you choose what IP address range to lease to it's clients. It will only lease the 192.168.0.0 network range, and you cannot change that. ICS has very limited port mapping functionality and low performance compared to the regular NAT service. ICS is only good for 2-5 computer networks that do NOT have running DNS, AD, DHCP, Web or E-Mail services, and if that's not the case - consider NAT.

Anubis - while I agree with you in principle, did you even read the original post? The guy has two computers, one of which will be used primarily for gaming. Active Directory concerns aren't really a factor. ICS is probably the simplest solution in this case. An el-cheapo router is probably the best solution, but I'll leave that argument up to someone else. That being said...I'm bookmarking this thread for reference the next time somebody asks whether to set up ICS on their production server at work ;)